


The Age of Oddities Series. One: A Study in Pinks

by grassle



Series: The Age of Oddities [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Crack Treated Seriously, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, M/M, Murder Mystery, Regency, Spanking, racial slurs of the period
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:32:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassle/pseuds/grassle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Regency AU version of S1: A Study in Pinks, The Beaux's Banker and The Glorious Game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Archea2 and Lauramac_10 like the idea of Regency Sherlock, all skin-tight breeches and flowing white shirt. I like the idea of Sherlock and Lestrade, only with added Regency. And spanking.  
> Just don’t get the arse about historical, geographical, cultural, socio-economic or procedural inaccuracies. Seriously. Don’t.  
> Some details taken from the Lisa Kleypas and the T.F. Banks series about fictional Bow Street Runners.
> 
> “This is the age of oddities let loose.”  
> George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan

**The Age of Oddities Series. One: A Study in Pinks**

 “Ooooh. A bit flustered, are we, sir? A smidge foxed, is it?”

Despite almost toppling from his horse, Lestrade managed a glare at the cheeky young ex- and probably still sometimes street boy steadying it, who was looking him and his less than pristine clothes up and down.

“Jug-bitten,” the whipper-snapper sneaked out on a fake cough, his blue eyes wide with faux innocence as he drew his own conclusions from Lestrade’s stiff, slow, assisted dismount.

“It’s the early morning, lad!” His discomforts ameliorated by his irritation with the boy, Lestrade indicated the tiny yard and its structures at the back of 221 Baker Street, Billy’s domain and possibly dwelling, for all Lestrade knew. He meant to convey the fresh day, the city stirring around them, the bustle of commerce and services starting up afresh.

“’Course. Good rout, was it, master?”

“I can assure you, youngster, I’ve not so much been near any cups, much less am I in ’em.” He held the glare even after Billy took the nag’s reins. “I’m not even half-seas over or half-sprung. Nor –”

“Top-heavy?”

“God. There’s new cant by the day!” Lestrade exclaimed. “And most of it to do with drinking and vomiting. Fine world we live in, I don’t think. And brush your hair, boy!” he called as the black spikes ambled inside the section of stable left as stable, after the other bits had been…requisitioned.

“Toss pot,” came from the wooden stall. “Oh, that means drunkard an’ all, master.”

Still shaking his head – mentally; actually would have hurt too much – over the lad’s seeming penchant for collecting the new argot, Lestrade made his way in the yard door and got up the first flight of stairs without being seen by the housekeeper. Not that she was so abominable. Just in his present state he wanted peace and privacy, needed to check that his twenty-minute ride home from Bow Street hadn’t opened his wounds, for all it had set his bruises smarting and his bones aching. Yes; he needed solitude and privacy and –

“Lestrade.” Even the voice was long and lean as a cat, smooth and cool like silk, and dark and alluring as Turkish smoke. “Haven’t seen you in an – What…”

His leaning against the newel post, eyes closed as he conjured up an image of a sleek, purring cat wearing a choice collar peering slanting-eyed through wreaths of opium smoke must have tipped the wink to Sherlock Holmes that something was amiss. Not that Sherlock needed much of one, of _anything_ , for him to start.

“A nod’s as good as a wink,” Lestrade muttered.

“Indeed. Now, anyone else I’d say they were a trifle disguised…” came in those clipped tones, getting nearer as Sherlock stalked towards him. “But not you.” A long, slender finger lifted Lestrade’s chin. “Not mauled or even maudlin.”

“You as well!” Lestrade’s yelp made sense to him. Sherlock had never been one for using the new slang. Except to mock. He’d been keeping company with that gaggle of ragamuffins, his Irregulars again, Lestrade would warrant.

“The case it is, then. The one’s that had you on the hop for a week. The one that’s left you banged up. Come.”

He didn’t _come_ ; was forced; sorry, _helped_ inside the apartments Sherlock had designated 221B. Whether that appellation had been applied before Lestrade had been tricked into living there, into sharing Sherlock’s abode, into co-inhabiting what could have 221A or 221C, Lestrade had no notion. “I can walk!” he claimed. Couldn’t say _objected_. Because he didn’t. Didn’t object to Sherlock’s slim but sinewy strong arm around his waist, supporting him. Like it. Liked the folds of Sherlock white shirt billowing about, as if they were enveloping Lestrade too, liked the hard warmth and strength beneath the soft, snowy linen.

“And I can tend my own…needs,” he finished weakly, as he was sat on a wooden chair in the curtained-off section beyond the living-room.

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” insinuated itself into his right ear as Sherlock busied himself behind him with a clatter of metal. “Just, isn’t it…better if I help with them? After all, you…see to mine often enough.” And Sherlock was suddenly there, right in front of him on that rolling-about-on-wheels stool, bringing strain and discomfort to another part of Lestrade’s anatomy.

“You know, you can talk like an apothecary, using your gallipot words,” Lestrade remarked, “but you’re not actually a saw-bones.” He thought he’d scored a point when Sherlock stood, frowning, his sudden movement making his loose shirt splay out and drawing more attention to his legs. His extremely well-turned legs. Lestrade swallowed. God, those skin-tight pantaloons, buckskin coloured, but made of some stretch fabric, clinging to Sherlock’s legs, and those leather laces, pulling them in mid-shapely-calf…

Sherlock turned and bent over, and Lestrade harrumphed out a snort of laughter at the delicious sight he was treated to, that calf-clinger stockinette material smoothing, stroking, _hugging_ those ripe-peach arsecheeks… “Admit it,” he said. “You soak those so they shrink to fit you, don’t you.”

“Suede yes. This material no,” Sherlock surprised him by answering. “It’s bias-cut, so it…cleaves to one.” He caught Lestrade out again by appearing behind him and divesting him of his redingote, then his shirt, distracting him by sticking out a foot into Lestrade’s field of vision. He…did like Sherlock’s legs and feet, especially bare like that, untouched by stockings or Hessians, peeping out from his fitted knee-breeches or tight pantaloons or, if Lestrade were extra-lucky, those loose linen knee-length underdrawers he flounced around in, the perfect complement to his chemisette.

And, he thought, well; _hoped_ , Sherlock wasn’t averse to the sight of _his_ bare skin. His chest, now bared. He caught Sherlock’s sucked-back exclamation at his injuries. “Bloody Byron,” said Lestrade, by way of explanation. “And sodding Elgin. Or, begging their pardons, their lordships. Begging yours too, Your Viscountship.” Now he heard the sucked-in exasperated sigh any reference to his title drew from Sherlock.

“Don’t mass me in with those, or any other, of the nobility,” warned Sherlock. “You know I do not –” He peered suspiciously into Lestrade’s face, in time to see the grin blooming at having raised Sherlock’s wind.

“Fly a kite in that, I could!” Lestrade observed, then let loose a string of expletives as Sherlock ripped free the adhesive and drenched his wound in something that stung and burned.

“So, you were at the docks, ensuring the looted artefacts from an, erm, ‘hapless bosom gored’ made it to ‘northern climes abhorred’?”

“Don’t you start.” Lestrade breathed heavily, recalling the protests at the docks and along the streets to Mayfair, as the cases were conveyed thither under cover of darkness. Huh. Not…much cover. More like an excuse for a candlelit roister, and a pretext for a roughhouse for all London’s roister-doisters. Yes, the bruisers, the Bloods, and the more effete, those arty-farty Beaux. All there, all with an opinion about that Elgin knave-in-grain chipping off bits of Greek stone and shipping ’em back to London. Lestrade rolled a bruised shoulder, reflecting that for toffs, they could get stuck in to a mill when they chuse.

“So you’ll not be attending the private viewing in the Mayfair mansion of the friezes and pediments his lordship proposes to hold, displaying his stolen treasures?” Sherlock was dabbing with one hand and preparing a large-looking needle with the other as he spoke, perhaps trying to distract his victim. “I could procure vouchers for a showing…”

“He can go frieze. And I’ll give him an impediment.” Lestrade’s answer was prompt, and in his delight at hearing Sherlock laugh, he accepted the beaker of cloudy tincture he was passed. “Nice!” came his reaction on downing it. Then suspicion set in. He must have been frazzled indeed to meekly –

“Something to dull the pain.” Sherlock scowled at Lestrade’s inquisitorial face. “Noting of venom, I assure you. Look, I’ll take some too.” He dissolved a few grains in water and Lestrade watched as the mix turned black, then cloudy, and Sherlock drained the glass.

“And before you begin your tedious catechism, I do keep my experiments outside in my laboratory,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Mostly. Lucky for you I had a few items to hand.”

“Lucky for me you’re up ungodly early,” Lestrade observed.

“I haven’t lain down yet,” came the answer. “And I was at the most diverting amusement…”

“Thought I heard you chuckling, when I was in the yard. What…” He lost his thread of thought: the distillate worked so quickly Lestrade barely felt the pinches that must have been Sherlock stitching his wound closed. He chuckled. “Usually the other way round. Me doing you,” he commented.

“Inspector! Whatever can you mean?” reached his ears, the drawl practically a purr.

“Me patching you up. All your burns and gashes. Dunno why you’re bothering, really.” He placed his fingers over the longer, slimmer ones now rubbing salve slowly into his bruises.

“Oh, well, can’t have you springing an infection and contaminating me, when I have important work to do. Equally so, we can’t have you dripping blood all over the place.” Sherlock stroked his handiwork, the neat white bandage around Lestrade’s tanned arm, making Lestrade’s skin ripple with gooseflesh. “Mrs Hudson would pitch a fit. And the pomade’s my own concoction. I’ve been needing a live human to test it on, to note the rate of healing.”

“I see.” Living with Sherlock you chose your battles, so Lestrade ignored the thought of…non-live flesh being…tested. His own very living flesh heated now, under those delicious fingers soothing herbal ointment into it. Did he imagine those elegant fingers lingering overlong on his nipples, making the flat nubbins into erect flesh? What experiment could that be? He leaned back into the tall, slim body behind him and felt his mouth stretch into a huge grin. The alcohol, medicine, potion, whatever, was –

“Tincture of opium laudanum. A simple opioid analgesic. My own formulation and maceration in forty-eight percent alcohol. There’s saffron, bruised cinnamon and bruised cloves too.”

“Very housewifely.” Lestrade smacked his lips. “You sound like Mrs Hudson.”

“It was her sherry wine I used,” Sherlock admitted, and Lestrade couldn’t stop laughing.

“You done with me, then, Doc? Oh, where’s the real doctor?” John Watson lived there too, sharing Sherlock’s quarters. Another in the line of waifs and strays and unfortunates Sherlock took in. Hang it all, that didn’t describe Lestrade, did –

“Out at some tedious meeting or interview or other in Harley Street. Trying to find a professional practice. And you’d best not re-clothe.” Strong fingers held Lestrade’s shirt from his grasp as a storm-tossed blue-grey gaze traversed his naked chest. “Don’t want to get unguent on your shirt.”

“I’m a little…” Well, something had his nipples standing to attention. Perhaps the salve smeared on them. It was…astringent.

“Oh, you’d better come through, rest a little. I need you for something later and you’ll be no good to me if you aren’t refreshed,” Sherlock almost, well, _prattled_. “What? You’ll only fall down the stairs if you attempt them. You can’t expect me to help you in your incapacity,” he added, his tone breezy and dismissive, as Lestrade opened his mouth. He closed it, feeling his lips smirk a little.

“What.” His companion missed nothing.

“I’m recalling some talk…about moving stairs. The ‘endless conveyor’, wasn’t it? An ‘inclined stairway’? Some simple hydraulics that would convey passengers onto landing platforms? Placed in the same physical space as one might install a staircase and”

“I’m flattered, I suppose, that you hang on to my every word. That you’re so interested in my inventions.” The cat had got the cream and no mistake.

“Invention,” Lestrade chuckled, rising. “All hot air, if you ask me, like that fustian… Oh. Pardon.”

“Yes, I thought bruising the cloves would combat the bitter aftertaste to the tincture.” Sherlock furrowed his brow at Lestrade standing with one hand on his stomach, the other over his mouth. “But a draught of –”

“Here. Nature’s remedy for upset stomachs.” Lestrade made a long arm for the bottle of brandy. It was French, of course, and he gave the unrepentant free-trader a Look. His censure was hard to maintain when the rapscallion bent his curly head to pull the cork free of the glass – using his teeth and plumping those full lips into a perfect heart, then an unholy kiss as he eased the cork free, his breaking-dawn eyes raised to Lestrade. Sherlock raised his head and Lestrade found himself holding out a hand, for his tormentor to deposit the freed cork in and swipe the palm with his tongue. When Lestrade opened hastily closed eyes, Sherlock helped him tilt the bottle, holding it to Lestrade’s lips.

“Broken all the glasses?” Lestrade commented, choosing his battles and ignoring the slatternly state of housekeeping. His rooms upstairs weren’t much better. He responded to the moue Sherlock made and the raised eyebrow, holding up the bottle for Sherlock to drink. From the same spot Lestrade had, he noted. Well, they shared enough utensils, rate he had to slip food to the absent-minded one, getting him to eat.

He’d been in Sherlock’s bedchamber before, of course, just as Sherlock had in his. He stumbled a little as he walked, and Sherlock held his body against his, to steady him.

“Damned physic. I hope you’re not thinking of cupping me too.”

“All in good time.” And Sherlock let his hand stray against a certain part of Lestrade’s anatomy, making his meaning clear. “I discovered the most diverting piece of writing.”

“I thought I heard you chuckling like a moonling.” Lestrade settled back on the enormous bed and folded his hands behind his head. Not least because it puffed his chest out. “What…” He let his host, tutting about his fancy bedclothes, remove his boots and half-stockings for him. “I see.” He squinted at Sherlock, preparing to use him as a bolster. “You don’t want my nasty greasy unguent over your nice clean shirt, do you? Mrs H will need the smelling salts, and by that I mean the sherry.”

With a considering, “Hmmm,” Sherlock tugged his shirt free. Lestrade mentally consigned Elgin’s marbles to the depths of the Thames – Sherlock’s chest was far better sculpted and far more porcelain-looking than those stained bits of chipped stone he’d glimpsed.

“So what’s this then?” He indicated the small volume Sherlock was stroking, making Lestrade’s dry throat swallow as he smoothed a delicate finger down the book’s cover.

“ _The Journal of an Army Surgeon during the Peninsular War. With Special Reference to the most Particular Character of The Duke of Wellington._ By Dr John H. Watson, Captain, His Maj –”

“Sherlock!” Lestrade thundered. “I know you’re shockingly loose in the haft, but please tell me you didn’t steal the poor gloak’s diary?”

“ _Inspector._ One would think you have the worst opinion of me…and need a draught for that sudden cough.” Lestrade started guffawing at that, and found it hard to stop. It was seemingly infectious, and needed a further toast with the brandy-bottle. “ No; this is a bound and printed copy, see, that John had made up.”

“Writer cove, then, is he?” Lestrade hadn’t known.

“Not…exactly.” Sherlock settled back, torso propped up on Lestrade, missing his bruises, and began. ‘“Any Reader who may feel inclined to take offence at the views of this Journal will kindly bear in mind that the Writer was a Party and He was not. Explanatory Note: The first He being I, the Author, the Army-Surgeon, and the second He being You, the Reader. I say he the Reader as the Matters contained within these Pages are not deemed suitable for the fairer Sex.”’

“That’s a…rum beginning,” Lestrade commented. “And talking of…” He swigged deep before handing the bottle down to his bedmate and felt the brandy’s warm glow tingle through his limbs, relaxing them and smoothing them out, somehow, in a way he hadn’t felt since the dratted Elgin’s Marbles case began. “Lost his marbles, if you ask me,” he muttered, and the chuckle from the marble-worthy man sprawled against him made him question how much the liquor and how much the situation was responsible for his present cheer. “Carry on, longshanks,” he decreed, squirming against the tickle of Sherlock’s curls on his chest, then wincing against the sharp dig in his ribs from bony fingers unerringly finding their target blind. “What? you’re the only one allowed to coin nicknames? Oh, think I don’t know it was you who started that Argent Agent, thing, when I started to begrey?”

 “I think you’ll find I merely improved upon the original. _The Ardent Agent_?”

“Yes, well.” Lestrade coughed. “The Woman’s an actress, not a playwright. Can’t expect her to be good at word-spinning stuff. Not like you, Mr Top Lofty.”

“Or, seemingly, Dr Captain Watson,” sighed Sherlock, taking up his tome. ‘“On the 10th of A– 180– I embar–d on board the ship S– in order to join the 40th Reg. w/ the illustrious Personage –”

“Hang about!” Lestrade protested. “It’s hardly Army dispatches – why all the censoring?”

“It’s more that he’s trying to use abbreviations, I think. The new style, all that curtailing, for a fast-paced age?” Sherlock explained, his shaking shoulders rocking his bolster under him as he laughed. “He’s trying to catch the spirit of the times.”

“Oh.” Lestrade felt his answering grin curl right down to his toes. The spirit he’d imbibed, he supposed. “So we’ll never know the illustrious person –”

‘“Sir Arthur Wellesley,”’ Sherlock continued, not missing a beat.

“Oooh. Right spoiled the suspense, that has.” Lestrade reached down and tickled a too-prominent rib. enjoying the slide of Sherlock’s head towards his groin as he wriggled in reaction. “Mind, the book title did give it away, I guess. Carry on?”

‘“It was intended we should sail the following Morning but the Wind changing Direction from a Nor’West to a WestWard prevented us.”’

“As it would,” came Lestrade’s sage comment. He peeped down to see if there was a reason Sherlock over-emphasised certain words – apart from the comedic effect – and saw each noun was capitalized. “Very capital,” he noted. “Is that the latest style?”

“It was. About half a century hence,” Sherlock answered.

“You mean _Century_ ,” Lestrade exaggerated, his huffed breath stirring the curls of the moptop resting on him. He settled them down with a finger, leaving his finger twining and smoothing as long as he dared.

‘“11th of August.’ Look, he forgot and wrote it in full. ‘I was introduced to the bluff, bearded Captain D– I– K– of the HMS _Endeavour_ , under orders for Lisbonne, P –.”

Sherlock had to pause for Lestrade to finish giggling not just at John’s scruples having prevented him from naming the country but not its capital, but also at Sherlock’s slim finger lingering under the name of the captain and his ship.

‘“He very kindly offered to take me. Offered for my Passage. An Offer so agreeable I decided to avail Myself. I got off immediately following our frank and pleasurable Encounter”’ – really, Lestrade! You’re spluttering on me! – ‘“at the Seamen’s Retreat Inn and lost no Time removing my Luggage from the S– to the L– In truth, the good Captain D– I– K– had the bigger, more experienced vessel and was practiced in plying his Craft.”’

He kindly allowed Lestrade a few minutes’ respite. “Does he,” Lestrade spluttered, “ever get to Lisbonne, P –?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But there’s more.” Sherlock turned around and the pure mischief gleaming from his eyes was blinding. In that moment, Lestrade forget the pangs of, well, whatever they’d been at Dr Watson’s moving in to share with Sherlock and forgave the benighted man _anything_ for putting that unalloyed mirth, that easy merriment into Sherlock’s countenance.

‘“12th, strong westerly Winds prevented our sailing. Confined to the Captain’s Cabin where I sank to my Knees and offered up an Orison and was kept most diverted by the tireless D– I– K– and…13th, Winds still strong…14th, Wind unchanged. 15th, we received news of the Battle of Talavera. The news was brought by Ensign T.W. N-K, a slight, slim Lad of some 13 Summers, out of breath and his Cheeks ruddy, his blonde Hair in disarray and his China-Blue Eyes shining with his Hurry. Captain D– I– K– bore the beardless youth to his Cabin to get his Briefs and Discharge his Packet. When they emerged, the youth had entirely put himself into the Captain’s Hands and Captain D– I– K– kindly offered to lodge the young man, by accommodating him in his Cabin. He had received into his Cabin as many as he could conveniently accommodate and I should therefore should take my Passage to the Gun Room, bunking in the Bosom of the Officers of the Ship.”’

Lestrade grabbed the journal. This was a Banbury tale of Sherlock’s, surely? ‘“16th. Our number in the Gun Room, a place of naked Weapons and primed Balls, was 7. To the whole of the Officers I became the Subject of their Attentions and after being instructed in the ancient Seaman Art of sucking a Monkey’… Sherlock, what the h –”

“I believe it’s a nauti…cal term,” Sherlock drawled, spoiling the effect by hiccupping as he swallowed chortles. “Meaning to, to s-suck or draw liquor out of a cask by means of a straw or tube.” He wiped his eyes.

‘“It was decided it was high time for knock-me-down –”’

“Strong ale,” Sherlock threw in, between snickers.

‘“And then strip-me-naked.’ Yes, gin, I know. Sherlock, ‘the Matters contained within these Pages’ are most definitely not intended for ‘the fairer Sex’!” This is…” He was beyond words, just dissolving into guffaws.

“Isn’t it _just_. And?”

Shaking his head, Lestrade read, between gales of mirth, “I was soon spent, but I had the good Fortune to be particularly noticed by the Second Lieutenant, from whom in consequence I received the most marked Treatment, all of which smoothed my Passage.’ I’ll lay odds it did, probably nightly!” He was ashamed of himself.

“And he earned his stripes. He says so presently.” Sherlock filched the volume back. “I presume those are the marks of the Marked Attention to which he refers and, and –”

He collapsed, laughing as loudly as Lestrade. His action had rendered him flat, alongside Lestrade, and he threw one elongated leg over Lestrade’s nearest. His motions caused Lestrade to…stiffen. Was is his imagination – although Sherlock berated him for its lack – or was Sherlock… _rubbing_ , just a little?

“Oi, spindleshanks.” Lestrade twitched his leg, and, perforce, Sherlock’s. “Is that what this is?” He didn’t need to say the word _leg-over_. Sherlock…knew. “I mean, you’ve plied me with intoxicating drink.”

“And drugs.”

“Quite.” No point expecting penitence from that unholy imp. “You’ve read me, well, what can only be called inflaming literature.”

“Albeit accidental.”

Lestrade snorted. “Nothing happenchance about this. We seem to be in the midst of a tumble.” He stared hard at Sherlock.

Sherlock stared back, even more intently. “You’re raising…no objection. You’ve never refused me. Or I you,” he added, a breath or two later.

“It’s just…” Lestrade swallowed and took a final swig of the brandy-wine. “It seems to keep happening. Me coming home and you, run out of potions.”

“What?” Sherlock blinked.

“You can’t sleep,” Lestrade explained. “So you fancy some…sport. Some…tiring diversion. ” He hoped, really hoped, he’d kept the weight from his tones.

“You think…” Sherlock blinked more rapidly. He stuttered a little and his cheeks coloured, just a blush, but Lestrade saw it. “If you think…”

“What. What then. What should I think.” When Lestrade got the sentence out, his voice was quiet and soft.

“That I… That… That you owe me.” Sherlock sat up straighter.

“I owe you?” Lestrade tried to rise, best he could with that spidershanks over him.

“Yes, indeed. For, for your lodgings. Here.” Sherlock went to wave a fine-boned hand around, but Lestrade snatched it.

“Lodging? Lodg – I’ll lodge you, you Duke of Limbs!”

“Wouldn’t agree I was ill-made, but yes, I rather fancy you accommodating me.” And then Sherlock rubbed, slow and deliberately, in a way that inflamed and incensed Lestrade until one bled into the other. With a huge, heavy heave, he pushed the bamboozler flat and straddled him.

“Think I’m some dockside doxy, penny-a-fumble, do you?” he breathed.

Sherlock shrugged. Unfair how he could look so airy, despite his position. “Tumble, you said.”

What followed was not by any means a seduction, nor even a romp. The kiss, unleashed by Lestrade’s fury at the totty-head under him, at those plum-fruit lips and strawberry-flushed cheeks, was a hard clash of wills, a battle for domination. The fumble, Sherlock trying to get free, Lestrade trying to pin him captive, was equally as hard-fought.

“I’m amazed,” Lestrade panted, thrusting his hands into those silken curls and holding Sherlock still for what Lestrade chose to mete out, “that you didn’t ask for recompense for your ministering to me. Consider _this_ payment.” And their love-battle, the latest in a long line of skirmishes, turned rut, with freed hard-on meeting freed hard-on, Lestrade still on top. Oh, it was well-nigh perfect, Sherlock’s dick rubbing against his and he slid himself up and down a bit, loving the contact. He felt the brush of tousled curls against his jaw before Sherlock bit his earlobe. Not that lightly, either. Lestrade jerked, to feel a rasping tongue laving away the sting.

“Think you can take me?” he whispered in Lestrade’s ear, then blew lightly.

Lestrade shivered but reached down, his hand fisting around as much of their dual erections as he could manage. He thrilled to the lewd moan this wrenched from his bedmate, who seemed content to let him take the reins, gratifying himself with tracing the rim of his ear with his tongue, his touch delicate and sweet, but always laced with the threat, the promise, of a sharp-sting bite.

“Do you?” the velvet voice breathed again.

Lestrade slid his hand up, squeezing lightly as Sherlock pressed down into him, rolling his hips slightly. “I know I can.” He wrapped his arm around Sherlock and held him as close as they could be. Together they rolled, rubbed, fought for dominance, and granted submission. Sweat slicked their bodies, and their mouths fused together as they raced toward completion. It was everything and yet not quite enough. Would never be enough. He was almost there. He would never be there. It’d just take one more –

A splash of warm cum hit his stomach, and Sherlock moaned again, this time as he came. The twin sensations were enough to make Lestrade lose it. Waves of release swept through him as he spilled onto Sherlock, shaking at the hard-won spending ripping the life from him. He cried out, Sherlock’s name wrenched from his lips. Minutes later, or so he thought, Sherlock wiggled under him, and Lestrade found the strength to raise himself up on his weakened arms and move aside, collapsing at his companion’s side. Hardly knowing what he was about, he kept one leg pinned over Sherlock’s.

“Well,” came at last from the man of course hogging the pillows, the man dabbing and himself with Lestrade’s discarded shirt. “That was a first. And I did say I wanted tupping, if you recall.”

Lestrade’s groan was loud, in contrast to Sherlock’s peeved tones, as he turned over to flop onto his back. He snatched his shirt back and in turn blotted the now cooling cum from his nethers. “ _Strangling’s_ what you’ll get, one of these days. Telling you now.”

“And I suppose you’re sleeping here.” For all he tried, Sherlock couldn’t maintain the peeved note. And when Lestrade pried one eye open to look, Sherlock didn’t look all that put out either. His beautiful face was softened and sweetened, Lestrade always thought, as they trysted, and after climax especially so.

“Suppose I’m too buffled-headed to make the stairs, much less find my room.” Lestrade yawned, settling onto the half of pillow left untenanted as Sherlock moved over. Just a little.

“You’re not some bumpkin or booby,” came hard on the heels of that.

“Just some bull calf,” Lestrade replied, feeling large and ungainly, in the aftermath of his spending.

“You move…well enough when you like.” Sherlock, not even winded, propped himself on an elbow. Lestrade shut his eyes against the scrutiny.

“And now what I like is some rest. Some long hours, and no disturbance. Think you can manage that, Viscount Starched-Shirt?”

“Not wearing a shirt, starched or otherwise,” reached his ears, scant seconds before the sheet, and then the blanket were tugged up over him.

“Oooh, you must really want something from me later,” Lestrade said on a huger than huge yawn, recalling Sherlock’s words of earlier.

“Must I,” he thought he caught, a whisper in the still of the room.

“All I want’s a kip. No interruptions, no…”

He was incapable of further utterance, and his wish was granted, although not for as long as he’d have liked. Never was. He was woken, he wasn’t sure how much later, by John’s voice. And hey ho, the day started. Again.


	2. Chapter Two

He flung out a hand at the movement in the bed. Was he trying to detain his elusive, unpredictable bedmate? His rational mind knew he’d no hope of that. His half-awake, half-dreaming consciousness, however…

“I appreciate you’re eager to see the sights of London, John, but I can assure you this is far from being a Molly house.” Sherlock, crisp bite, could easily harden into contempt.

“I should say! More like a dolly mop!”

“Mrs Hudson!” Their housekeeper, sniggering no doubt behind her hand, at having compared her employer to a part-time, as and when occasion took him, strumpet. Both Sherlock’s and John’s vociferous denials filled the apartment. With a sigh, Lestrade swung out of bed and jammed his clothes on, heaving a sigh of relief that Sherlock had too. Frank, his Bow Street boy, was standing pugnaciously, face tilted, facing up to those present, arms crossed over a letter.

“You can _leave_ things for me, you know,” Lestrade observed, making the messenger boy jump at the voice behind him. “Here, at my dwelling.”

Frank’s head tilted more, the angle alarming as his blackcurrant eyes looked from Lestrade to Sherlock.

“Ye…ah. I see.” Lestrade reached out for the missive. Better not let Sherlock stick his slightly, just slightly, turned-up nose into official officer’s business…any more than could be helped. He saw Mrs Hudson keeping the boy firmly in her sights, but she hadn’t activated her squadron. She didn’t, not for an official footboy of the Magistrates’ Court. Just eyed him with the healthy suspicion she did all trades or service people.

“No answer. Except, tell ’em I’m right on it.” Lestrade, perusing the note, didn’t look up, but knew Mrs H would have accompanied the boy down and out, Hopefully not making him turn out his pockets on the doorstep. No; more likely giving him some of the apple puffs he smelt baking, speed him on his way back to Bow Street. Frank tended to save his breath for running about the city, and _inhaling_ the food he needed to do so. No one had ever seen him chewing or swallowing, although the food vanished. Lestrade looked up at the disturbance at the window, and John’s exclamation of surprise.

“Hmm. Man dead in London club.” John was still staring wide-eyed and pointing as Sherlock retrieved the note from the carrier pigeon’s leg and scanned it. “I presume this is the same news you have, Lestrade?”

No need to nod, Sherlock could probably read confirmation in his face.

“That…that…is that from your street network?” John gasped, still pointing.

“Hardly.” Sherlock crossed to his desk and dipped his pen into the ink. “My most charming elder brother. You had…the pleasure of him, if you recollect. On two occasions.” He sneaked a peep at Lestrade, who contorted his face trying not to react at this deliberation invocation of John’s accidentally whatever it was prose. “And on the second, you had him.” Lestrade hoped that noise had sounded like a cough. “Flat on his back.” That didn’t. He grabbed his handkerchief and hid in it.

“Well, he insulted me! How could he attempt to bribe a captain of His Majesty’s army! Asking me to spy on you and report!” John spluttered.

“Mrs Hudson does.” Sherlock shook his nib. “Supplements her income with the payments.”

“And you and her concoct the most –”

“Cock ” Sherlock answered Lestrade blandly.

“And bull stories,” Lestrade managed. “What was that one about you and that Hunter woman racing for Gretna Green, making your brother send a convoy after you and –”

“Gretna Green for a special service, Golders Green for a religious service…Mrs H is no longer young and gets a little addle-pated,” Sherlock explained.

Lestrade snorted. the old woman was as sharp as a bodkin, as sharp as they came. “Hang about. You usually answer Mycroft’s messages with a two-word reply,” he observed.

“Not so. Three, if I add the word Fatty after,” Sherlock corrected, finishing his elaborate lines of runes and symbols and sealing the capsule.

“But you never obey your brother’s requests. Why would you get involved in my case?”

“The man,” Sherlock said after a silence, “was an acquaintance of Mycroft. The family are friends of ours. My mother would esteem it greatly, etcetera.”

Lestrade’s answering silence pulsed just as fiercely.

“Come along, John,” Sherlock said eventually, breaking the deadlock.

“Me?”

“Why yes. I believe you were interested in being a chronicler…of events. Isn’t that so?”

 _Sherlock! Have your replaced his journal?_ Lestrade’s sudden freeze, his eyes on Sherlock’s face, said.

 _You’re actually asking?_ Sherlock’s half-hoisted eyebrow reproved. He turned away from Lestrade, as frozen and pale as any colourless frieze, to continue: “And besides, we might need a doctor.”

“For a dead body?” John had the right to sound puzzled.

“Yes, seeing as which Coroner is working today…” Sherlock didn’t elucidate further, just span himself into his waistcoat, then his great coat. None of that cut-away morning coat or cloth jacket for him. He indicated John should precede him out of 221B and down the stairs. “My shirt looks good on you,” he murmured, as Lestrade snatched up his abandoned redingote of scant hours earlier and struggled into it. Oh yes! He had grabbed up one of Sherlock’s, left lying out on the bed, instead of his own soiled linen. Huh. He accepted the help to shrug his coat on and replied, “You mean, I look good in your shirt,” before hurrying down the stairs, hoping he’d left his would-be tormenter befogged. Even for a moment. Even just a little. His heart squeezed at the soft chuckle in his wake.

“Here, this isn’t your usual cab and driver,” he commented, in Baker Street, seeing Billy holding the reins of a different closed four-wheel cab standing waiting.

“You mean the Hackney registered to Sherlock. Much more convenient than maintaining a private carriage,” John threw in. Lestrade wouldn’t be drawn into…anything. Wouldn’t catechise the good doctor, asking for the coachman’s name, for instance.

“This one is acceptable. Tom personally vouched for George and vehicle," Sherlock explained.

“You know you can get any coach?” Lestrade said.

“I’d rather…take my precautions,” Sherlock answered.

“Than get into what, a death cab?” Lestrade chuckled,

“One never knows. I’m…chary of cabs.”

“Ever since that fortune teller’s prediction, when he was a babe. Said”

“Drive on!” Sherlock thumped on the ceiling, departing without answering Mrs H or bidding adieu to Billy.

Lestrade started once again to ask how long their housekeeper had known Sherlock, and the exact nature of their, well, friendship, he supposed, but something in Sherlock’s eye quelled him.

“Oh, bloody end to me!” exhaled Sherlock as the coach reversed and turned in a tight circle. He glared at the expanse of green to his left as they trotted along the grand terraces gleaming with huge, classically fronted residences. It made him stick his head out of the window and cry upwards, “I’m not a green tourist, you nincompoop!”

“Do you no harm to take the air for once, way you race about the town,” Lestrade voice-of-reasoned, grabbing for the window frame as the carriage suddenly ran over a rut the cabby seemed to have unaccountably found in the middle of the broad, architecturally distinguished thoroughfare.

“I’ve never driven down here in a carriage,” John confessed, his left hand twitching as if it held a pencil and his right smoothing a non-existent noteblock on his knee.

“What, never tooled down this remarkable mile-long example of classical town planning tempered by the romantic aspects of the English picaresque landscape, built for upper-class leisure?” Sherlock sneered, all in one breath.

“Or, to give it its name, Regent Street,” Lestrade added. He did pass that way often, preferring to ride to Bow Street via the West End, an easy journey from Sherlock’s – his – abode.

“I know it was laid down to connect the Park with that fashionable Charing Cross area, harmonising it all,” John said.

“Oh, don’t be so schoolroom missish! To link the Regent’s park with his palace, you mean. We’re basically on his ceremonial carriageway.” Sherlock’s lip curled. Just a little. Lestrade licked his.

“And to cordon the princes from the paupers,” he said, turning his head from prim-and-proper Mayfair on the right to cheek-by-jowl Soho on the left.

“And show Napoleon whatever he can do, we can do better.” John sat straighter, giving a tight nod at the grand thirty-foot wide boulevard.

“I liked it better before!” Sherlock insisted.

“It was all cows and cow shit here before, Sherlock,” put in Lestrade.

“This split London right down its heart! Bloody Nash,” swore Sherlock. “And bloody Prince Regent.” The cab stopped, dead, making them tumble about like discarded marionettes. “I mean it!” he cried up through his tousled mahogany curls at the unseen but seemingly shocked driver. “Is he a crown prince or a town planner?”

“That’s your fare doubled, pig-widgeon. Again. Drive on, sir!” Lestrade half-stood and called, mindful of the traffic building up behind them. He clutched his coat pocket, feeling for his stick of office, the small brass tipstaff surmounted by a crown. He…tended to check regularly if it were on his person. Sherlock had been known to filch it and…have an identical one made. Lestrade now had a small collection.

“Cheer up. This is your favourite bit,” Lestrade pointed out, indicating All Soul’s to his left as their coach prepared to swing west to Portland Place.

“You’re….fond of that church?” John sounded a little doubtful, as well he might, looking at the circular portico, capped with a not-much-smaller tower, which was in turn topped by an out-of-place-looking slender cone.

“I’m an admirer of Sir James Langham, yes.”

“Wasn’t it…Nash who designed it?”

“Langham’s the old cove who wouldn’t sell his land just here, forcing their eminences to abandon their notions of a straight sweep of road and make do with this,” Lestrade explained, snatching out at the strap as their driver took Regent’s Street’s only curve, a visible hinge in the street and an awkward abrupt bend, too awkwardly and abruptly. Lestrade’s feet tangled with Sherlock’s, who made no move to free his.

“What, don’t like the Nash…ional Taste?” Lestrade commented, recalling the cartoon he’d seen in the print shop a few mornings ago. Sherlock scowled, and his long foot pressed down on Lestrade’s, who grinned and pressed his other on top of the bony one, caging it. Sherlock still made no bid for freedom.

“Hang it all, you should’ve turned right there, you damned cod’s-head!” Sherlock cried a second later. “He should have turned right _streets_ ago!” he complained to the carriage at large.

“Ah, but this way you get to rail against Piccadilly too,” replied Lestrade. The carriage had turned into the West End area and was trundling right down to Pall Mall, bounding St James’s Street.

“And protest against the square?” John added, as the jarvey contoured it with a flourish, slowing to a crawl at the living obstacles of strolling dandies and bucks.

Sherlock’s teeth were clenched. “Look at them all. Isn’t it hateful. All these…herds, in their streets, assembly rooms, opera houses, theatres, clubs –”

“At their pleasure gardens, parks, taverns?” Lestrade threw in, the voice of the less elevated.

“Enjoying lighting, paving, drainage?” John added, a doctor and a soldier.

“They’re just commodities. To stop the populace rising up. And the masses are bamboozled by all the show and flimflammery. Happy, in their mindless complacency and – Let me out here, sneaksby! The fat-head’s going to tour us the entire length of King Street!”

Sherlock, Lestrade’s baton in his hand – Lestrade clutched at his side as if he’d a stitch from running a mile – rapped on the ceiling extremely loudly. The resulting dead stop had them sprawling, Lestrade on top of his peeved companion who was still berating the hapless jarvey. Oh, they hadn’t gone that far along the street. But by the look on the coachman’s face, he wouldn’t be stopping for Sherlock on a wet night. More like gallop through a puddle in front of him. Probably just as well Sherlock had his own Hackney.

“Oh, I’ve no rhino,” Sherlock announced, not even making a dumb-show of patting at his pockets for change. Lestrade didn’t know why he bothered – Sherlock rarely had blunt on him.

“Hark at Florizel,” he muttered, jerking his head at Sherlock, seeing the driver’s scowl melt into a grin as hearing Sherlock compared to his hated Prince Regent. Oh, not that _Sherlock_ was a spunging fellow. No; at home, or even on the highway, he was just as likely to hand his purse over to Mrs Hudson, Billy, or to Lestrade when he wanted something getting in. By the time Lestrade had paid and got a paper-reckoning for Bow Street, Sherlock was striding up St. James’s and John still standing, drinking in the sights and sounds of the elegant crowd.

Lestrade nudged him gently: they had to get along St. James’s Street. Here no women – well; no decent women – strolled or ambled. It was a male preserve, clubland.

“Oh look.” John admired a display of slim sliver card cases in shop cases. ‘“As purchased by Prinny,”’ he read. “What, all of them?”

“Good,” floated back from farther up the street. “I’ll know what to avoid.”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade asked, catching him up – no mean feat. “Do you even know which club we’re going to?”

“Not this one.” Sherlock barely paused outside the Adam façade of number 28, Boodle’s. “It’s intentionally dull. All heavy, upholstered chairs and brandy and cigars for overweight, balding men from the shires to discuss hunting, shooting and” He was curtailed by a stout, elderly red-faced man glaring as he brushed past him, his riding boots squeaking him inside the hallowed portal.

“And not Brooks’s, either, probably.” John, trainee detective nodded. “With it being Whig.”

“Try White’s, shall we? What with it being the spot the death took place in?” Lestrade rolled his eyes and led them to number 37.

“This looks…familiar.” John stared at the large bow-window. “I’ve seen it…in magazines. And prints! Isn’t this…”

“Yes, where those wastes of space the Prince Regent – and that’s a great deal of space wasted – and his fop friend Beau Brummell sit and see and be seen.” Sherlock gave the window a rap – Lestrade grabbed his stick back again – making the dark-haired man sitting straight-backed in solitary splendor there jump and turn his back more firmly to them, after the most scathing of cursory quizzes. Sherlock rapped on the door next, this time with his knuckles. “Christ above. He’ll be turning his hand to a Silver Fork next,” he murmured in Lestrade’s ear, indicating John’s rapt expression.

“Should get enough material for one of those Dandy Rags here,” Lestrade replied, nodding up at the huge classically-styled edifice with its pillars and short flight of steps. “Bang-full of the upper class all dicing and drinking – and worse – in here.”

“And he could do with a new direction after his rough and ready, not to mention willing and able, men-only Journal was rejected by every publishing house,” Sherlock breathed.

“Sher –”

“As was his later epistolary attempt at a _Narrative of the Army in a Series of Letters with an Introductory Sketch of the Character, Military and Otherwise, of the Duke of Wellington_.”

“– lock

“And too his novel, using the word loosely, _Up The Peninsula with an English Duke_.”

“HOLMES!”

“And are you a member, Mr, ah, Holmes?” asked the lugubrious man, dressed in sombre black, who’d just opened the door in their faces and seemingly thought Lestrade was announcing Sherlock. Even his dark-brown eyes were doing their best to be black, and he barely cast his gaze over Sherlock’s companions, making Lestrade’s heart sink. White’s was the oldest club in London. They wouldn’t want the police in and would probably refuse him entrance. He’d have to backtrack, get the magistrate to swear out a warrant and –

“Yes, actually. Although I never set foot in here unless I can help it, of course.” Sherlock held up a small card for the gatekeeper to scrutinise. “Sherlock Holmes plus two guests.” The man’s gaze roved over the trio, then sort of stuck on Sherlock, particularly his tatterdemalion riot of curls, not an artfully sculpted shape like that of the Corinthian in the window. The man’s own hair was overlong and greased back, to curl outwards at the ends, like the edges of a mourning-fan.

“Mycroft insisted. He thought clubs would facilitate meeting the right sort,” Sherlock explained, breezing inside, ignoring the signing-in book. “With gentlemen’s’ clubs the first point of refuge for a man wishing to escape from domestic prison.”

“Hence all your home comforts.” Lestrade grinned. Sherlock’s chambers were unlike any other bachelor’s. “This…looks familiar.” He parroted John, but not funning. He pointed around the central space housing the staircase, indicating the familiar paintings, the chandeliers, the rooms for the turf gambling, for card games, for dice sports…

“Indeed. You've been here before. And got banned. We both did. The night you lost the bet.” Sherlock smiled. Not one of his thin ones, or his shamming ones. One that lit up his face and had Lestrade staring, lapping it up as much as John was ogling the interior.

“Ahem.” The slight, tiny doorman was more than that, it seemed and was accompanying them whilst some footman lackey went to check Sherlock’s status. Even his cough – especially his cough – albeit into a furled white-gloved hand, was funereal. He looked like a dancing-master fallen on hard times and so turned undertaker, Lestrade decided. “If I might just say… We offer a space in which to conduct business too. A forum to discuss politics, learn the sporting news, catch up with the continental information…”

“And drink like thirsty sailors and gamble away country estates,” John sighed.

“I hate to correct sir, but it appears you’re confusing us with Watier’s?” The house retainer’s screwed-up mouth spoke of his distaste at mentioning the name. Lestrade only hoped he wouldn’t spit, to ward off the evil. “Located at number 81 Piccadilly. Known as the ‘Great-Go’, I’m led to believe. A true gaming hell for high play.” He shivered, just slightly, the effect good. “Where there’s wild stakes and the members are men of fashion addicted to gaming and ready to throw away a fortune on a brief moment of chance. Oh yes, sir, many fortunes have changed hands over the tables.” He gave a sad head-shake, looking as if he were about to show samples of wood, for the coffin, and marble, for the headstone.

“Pon rep!” John exclaimed. “I suppose…a place like that…would be difficult to get in.”

“Subscription only, I’m afraid, sir,” mourned the man, “And they do say that most of club’s leading members have sustained such enormous gambling losses that the club will have to close its doors for ever.” He pursed his thin lips at that whispered confidence. John sighed again.

“Do come along!” came Sherlock’s voice, and Lestrade tipped the man, newly dubbed Charon by an eye-rolling Lestrade, for his trouble. Damn. He must have slipped over a bigger cling of blunt than he’d intended: Charon’s eyes brightened and his ears pricked up. He must have looked like that on hearing the violins tune up to begin the dancing-music. His steps light and gliding, he accompanied them. Lestrade encouraged John past the bow-window, where Brummell had been joined by three other immaculately dressed men – “The Unique Four, sir,” vouchsafed the retainer, stopping from naming the other trio at Lestrade’s head-shake – to a room along the corridor. John looked very much as if he wanted to say he’d catch them up, when he’d eavesdropped on his fill of _on dits_ , but mindful of his duties, went along and entered at the servant’s cough and tap.

“Christ, the cross and all the nails!” Lestrade swore – softly; he hoped – at seeing which coroner had been called out to the scene. His heart sank at the overlong nose the man was looking down through piggy eyes, and the equally overlong sideburns which formed a beard around the weak chin, the frame for the thin, pursed lips, just as Sherlock said, “Ah, Anderson. We meet again.”

“What.” Anderson’s lips all but vanished as he pleated them, and the bad smell under his nose seemingly intensified, if his face was any indication, as he rose from the footstool and threw his head back. “Is. He. Doing. Here?”

“The viscount is a family friend of the…” Hades and its blazes, the dead man lay right there, presumably where he’d dropped, and Lestrade didn’t know his name.

“Stavertons. Those dear old Stavs,” Sherlock supplied, not missing a beat.

“Is that so.”

“Oh yes. Famous for it,” Lestrade emphasised, looking to their Charon for confirmation and when he inched nearer, his face expectant, resigned himself to slipping the man more dibs for his help.

“Oh, why yes, quite so.” Charon added his much less lugubrious voice. “It’s said the then Marquess of Holmes and the then Baron Staverton initiated the firm friendship, the fruits of which flowered down the generations, when they came across the exiled and fugitive monarch, Charles II, hiding in a shallow stream which separated their country estates, and resolved to conceal him together, secreting him for a day at a time on their properties, one in a cowshed and one in a pigsty, seeing to all his needs themselves. Oh, with his majesty dressed as a tavern-wench,” he finished, with a flourish, a verbal arabesque indicative of his first calling in life.

In the hard silence which followed, Lestrade thought, damn, if he’d handed over a crown initially and half a crown just now, as circumstances seemed to suggest, that was his luncheon money for the sennight gone. “Your father still incapacitated?” he asked Anderson, to fill the gap. “Great pity, that.”

“Indeed. _He_ was a competent, well-read practitioner of his trade,” said Sherlock, not needing to add more.

“And this little fellow?” Anderson enquired of John, who was seemingly being pulled to the body. Lestrade realised Anderson was extending his not addressing Sherlock directly if he could help it to John.

“Dr Watson is the Stavertons’ personal physician,” Sherlock explained. “Shall I spell his full name and titles for your amanuensis?” This made Anderson exchange glances with the luckless pop-eyed, lank-haired recorder he been forced to employed to transcribe his findings and pronouncements, ever since Sally…well. “My friend, Dr John Watson,” he clarified. John was on the floor, over the deceased, pulling on a pair of silk gloves.

“Yes well.” Anderson gave a cough, nothing in the White’s employee’s league. “It’s pretty cut and dried. He was on the cut, in fact.” No one reacted to his pun, beyond Charon wincing. “I mean, look.” He swept a hand around the disordered room. “Revelling. Carousing. Heavy drinking. A lot of it about, nowadays, people going neck-or-nothing. And thus died. I say, a caudge-paw!” Anderson nudged his long-suffering secretary.

“And what’s all this brown residue?” The left-handed, or gaudge-pawed, John pointed to the stain over the man’s lower face. “Look like snuff.”

“It would be. I’m given to understand there was a snuff competition, sirs,” their host said. “Some talk of the new baron, God rest his soul, being able to identify any brand of snuff he sampled. Something of a connoisseur, I understand.”

“Do you. Do you really.” Sherlock’s miffed sniff was loud, and despite the sadness and solemnity and severity of the occasion, Lestrade had to look down to conceal a grin at the notion of a poacher on the consulting detective’s preserves.

“But that wouldn’t…” John trailed off, indicating the body.

“And then the boasting changed to who could take the most. Some bet or wager…”

“And there you are. Overdid it. Doing it rather too brown, literally.” Anderson’s tones held mean triumph as he pointed his walking stick at the russet marks on the man, and once more no one acknowledged his attempt at a witty bon mot.

“Good work, John,” murmured Sherlock, returning from his study of the room and joining John at the body. “Where does White’s get its snuff?” he enquired.

“Fribourg & Treyer’s.” The _of course_ was implicit.

“Oh, Anderson, before you go…” Anderson, fastidiously rolling down his sleeves, stiffened. “Which is this?” Sherlock continued. “Which brother? The eighth baron had twin sons, as I’m sure you know. The two were fast friends, did everything together, and the elder recently ascended to the baronetcy on the death of their father.”

Lestrade closed his eyes in helplessness, tighter as Anderson made a show of perusing the body.

“Oh, the younger of the two,” he said, eventually. “Hero worshipped his elder brother, attempted to outdo him, as everyone’s trying to live hell-for-leather these days, spurred on by his slight resentment of his brother succeeding to the title…”

“Very good.” Lestrade had to turn away at the dark silk of Sherlock’s tone. “Except _this_ is the elder.” Which spun into a noose for Anderson’s neck.

“Well of course. Still mourning his father, firm friends with his younger sibling, as you say, they were always together, and so he was worried by his…absence. With the brother missing, the new baron feared he was dead and so…” His voice had risen in pitch with the strain, and his helpmeet’s finger’s shook as they gripped and manipulated the pencil.

“Except he isn’t missing.” Sherlock gave a huge kick to an ottoman, sending it curving away, and revealing a male form lying behind it. “He’s right here.”

“Dead!” yelped Anderson. “Which pushed his elder brother, the new baron –”

“He…isn’t dead.” John had dashed across. “Just insensible.”

“A little like you, Anderson,” Sherlock added, standing aside as the coroner, spitting threats and issuing warnings, spluttered his way out, to have the door slammed not exactly behind him, but half on him. It made him squeak.

“Sir?” questioned his harassed assistant. “I didn’t catch that. How should I spell it?”

The door pushed wide open, slowly, and Anderson took a step back into the room. “Of course, I could have this ruled a suicide,” his announced, his words falling like hard pebbles into a still stream.

“What?” Lestrade was aghast. “You can’t do that, man! You know what that would do to the family!”

“No, perhaps, he doesn’t know,” answered Sherlock, raking Anderson, then his aide, with a diamond-hard stare. “I mean, for example, this young man here, his right hand, newly married – as were the twins, incidentally – doesn’t know Anderson’s secretly bedding his new wife. No…” He spoke over the chorus of exclamations. “His sister. No; both of them! And he prefers the sister. Pshaw, Anderson, you goat!”

“But, but,” came from the red-faced, head-shaking coroner. “But…”

“I see why you called him a goat. They butt, don’t they?” threw in Lestrade as Anderson hurried away, now declaiming, “I…I…” followed by his assistant, who looked as if he’d thought up a new use for his sharp pencil. “The body there’s unconscious?” Lestrade needed confirmation. John nodded.

“And reeking of alcohol and also stained with snuff.”

“We need to know details of the evening,” Lestrade said, gently fluttering a table cloth over the deceased body. “And the bets.”

“They’ll be in the Book,” Sherlock observed, passing him on another turn of the ornate room.

“In the Book!” echoed John. The huge leather-bound Book was a famous artefact of White’s, a relic from its earliest days, and in it its official keeper made a written record of the bets made between members. Lestrade turned to the club employee – he really must find out his name – who was sidling up to his, his face expectant. Croesus, he could call him: he’d be as rich as the old cove soon, rate he was sacking Lestrade dry of gold. Oh, hellfire. He’d given his last coins…so what was that slight jingle in his… Sherlock’s purse, that’s what. When had the sly… Never mind. The flashing of a bit of shiny had Twinkletoes prancing off.

“Married, you said?” Lestrade nodded down at the unconscious man he was helping transfer to an overstuffed sopha. “Pair of them?”

“Yes. I wasn’t interested enough to learn the details, obviously, but they both married very suddenly and relatively quietly before going off to serve,” Sherlock replied.

“Huh,” came from soldier John. “Lot of that about. Rich and titled glory hunters, buying a commission into a smart regiment because they fancy themselves in the uniform.” He rummaged in his leather pouch, finding a phial.

“They got themselves shipped abroad to join their father, the colonel,” Sherlock continued. “Got to Spain just in time to bring his body back.” He waited until John wafted the cracked-open glass tube under the man’s nose, then shoved John aside to slap the man’s face with a sharp crack.

“Jesus, Sherlock!” cried Lestrade, grabbing Sherlock’s arm not quickly enough to prevent him administering another. Lestrade threw John a pointed glance when it seemed the good doctor wanted to get stuck in too. They all leapt back as the man half sat and cast up his accounts with a loud retch and a foul smell. He was still half-insensible, but they managed to ascertain that yes, he’d been on the snort, but mostly on the mop at the club, and thus had been as drunk as an ape, then as drunk as a wheelbarrow, then completely shot in the neck.

“Rather like your pater, then. Only his was permanent and administered by the _Grande Armeé_ ,” Sherlock commented, adding, “ _What?_ _What?_ ” at Lestrade’s hissed, “ _Sherlock!_ ”

“M’brother?” gasped the man suddenly and tried to sit again, making them all leap back again.

“Sir…Edward,” John began, motioning Lestrade and Sherlock away. “I’m afraid there’s some very bad news, and you must be very brave and strong. Are you ready, man?”

Looking young and lost, the man nodded, but on being informed of the death of his brother, relapsed into unconsciousness. Lestrade turned to speak, but lost his thread at the sight of the man coming in. From the last century, Lestrade surmised, eyeing the stooped old gent from top to toe, from his powdered, curled wig down to the ancient silver tailcoat and knee-breeches and white-stockings of his livery, ending at the silver pumps on his gnarled old feet. His white-gloved hands shook as they carried a red and gold-tasseled cushion bearing the Book.

“The Custodian, sirs,” their guide supplied, unnecessarily. “He’ll oblige you.”

It took an age to get the hard-of-hearing elderly man to understand and even longer for his rheumy, dimmed eyes to turn to the page, but when he read out the terms of the wager transacted in that room in the early hours of the morning, his voice was startling strong. The terms of the bet, Baron Stanhope’s boast he could identify the ‘sort’ of snuff of all and every texture and feel, ‘“from the very fine to the very coarse, to the very dry, to the very moist,”’ chimed out as loudly as a bell.

“Did he collect?” Sherlock asked. Lestrade closed his eyes. Seemed the baron _had_ won, spurring his bested chums to try and recoup their losses by betting who could out-insufflate the others. The baron had won that too, or lost, really.

“Friends? Who was here?” Lestrade enquired. The employee was practically standing on his toes as he brandished the visitors’ book. He looked expectantly at Lestrade, who sighed. “Tell you what, Golden Ball. Just send me an alle-mal to Bow Street, why don’t you.”

“A Dutch reckoning’s the modern expression for verbal accounts, you know, Inspector,” Sherlock commented into the shocked silence. “For those lump accounts without particulars that you might find at spunging houses, say, or bawdy h –”

“Well seems to me there’s enough elbow-crooking and elbow-shaking goes on here!” Lestrade riposted, mimicking the actions associated with drinking and dice rattling to make his point clear. “Just read me the list, if you please, Mr Midas.” He dutifully copied down the names, noting down Lord this and Sir that, asking for spellings as needed, pretending not to see Sherlock scraping and snipping at bits of both brothers, the dead and the insensate. “Earl of Eire what?” he had to ask at one styling. “Foreign chap?”

“Whether Old-English or Hiberno-Norman I couldn’t say, sir,” sniffed the employee. “I’m afraid it’s all Beyond the Pale to me.”

“That’ll be all.” Lestrade snapped his notebook closed to clear the room. He sighed. These matters, involving the rich and powerful, were so dicey. Not only was it nigh impossible to get interviews with the Quality, never mind get straight answers out of ’em, but one wrong word or decision and you’d find yourself…out. Permanently.

“Sherlock?” He didn’t need to say more to undam the flood, normally, not when Sherlock had been presented with a puzzle. “You’re not satisfied with Anderson’s reckoning?” he prodded as Sherlock paced.

“Rarely, no,” came from the tangled-curled one. “But something’s…”

“Not right,” Lestrade finished.

“We need to dig deeper.”

‘“We?’” Lestrade questioned, standing so as to halt the flouncing.

“I… My brother’s orders…” Sherlock trailed off.

“Which you normally take the greatest of joy in thwarting.” Lestrade folded his arms.

“Damn it all, he’s my brother, man!”

“Whom you delight in vexing, whenever possible.” Lestrade raised an eyebrow.

“Fine! I…have a personal stake.” This was muttered, his back to them, facing…the two bodies.

Of course. The family, probably these lads, were his friends, Lestrade recalled.

He turned a little, embarrassed, and caught sight of himself in a huge, gilded-framed mirror. He made a drab figure in this elaborate room, his Public Officer sanctioned dark-hued trousers and coat (Lestrade’s this day old-navy blue), grey waistcoat and cravat and white shirt sombre against the golds and pinks, his figure diminished by the gleams and glints and pools of light. “Let’s go,” he said, swallowing. He’d write a note, get a messenger – not that dead-as-dust footman – to take it to Bow Street, get –

“Yes, indeed. I loathe these places,” said Sherlock, brushing against him on his way to the door. “Come, John. Seems you’ve got your wish.”

“My wish?” John scrambled after him.

“Why yes. Didn’t you desire to be a Bond Street Beau? It seems we’re all destined to go upon the Strut, to play the parts of Piccadilly Prowlers….”

All the nobs went in for fancy talk, rhyming or alliterating or whatnot, Lestrade reflected, making their third.

He couldn’t help but notice those window-hogging coxcombs, the Famous Four , or whatever they called themselves, hadn’t moved at all during the commotion.

“What would you call men like that, on the battlefield, John?” asked Sherlock. “Oh wait. I have it. A rake of cu –”

“Couldn’t you keep your voice down?” Lestrade begged. But Sherlock, of course, wouldn’t.


	3. Chapter Three

“Brace yourself, John.” he commanded. “For you’re about to step into the world of the dandies, that portion of St. James’s, bounded by Piccadilly and Pall Mall, St. James’s Street and –”

“Known as the _ne plus ultra_ of fashionable life!” John coughed to bring his voice down from the high pitch it had reached. He couldn’t quite manage it, so whispered his next observation: “Look, a Cyprian! Also referred to as a nymph of the _pavé_.”

God. He’d gone French now? Sherlock frowned.

“Interesting, isn’t it, how the use of foreign terms subverts prevailing codes of decency, via innuendo. It’s true: society is rotten when things are not called by their names. She’s a common wh –”

“Window shopping!” Lestrade cut in brightly, raising his hat to the woman, barque of frailty, or bit of muslin as she might be and probably was. Common she certainly wasn’t. “You know, looking in the shop windows as we pass. Like at these snuff boxes – very apt – in this jeweller’s, erm, _vitrine_.” He accompanied the French dig with an actual English one, more a tickle, really, of Sherlock’s ribs. It made the tall and annoying one bridle forwards, almost brushing against the two men already gawping at the trinkets, then step back out of their way, to lean against Lestrade. Lovely, really. In any language.

John bent down and pointed at the tiny boxes. “It say, ‘Inspired by His Highness, the Prince Regent.”’

“He has one for each day of the year, you know,” one of the Popinjays at the window said to his fellow.

“Fitting.” Sherlock’s baritone, intruding into their reverie, made the Macaronis jump. “When you consider how he gets up people’s noses non-stop.” And his words made them gasp and pivot around. “And like the substance he could be said to leave a stain, being the blot on the moral landscape that he is,” Sherlock continued as the two fribbles gaped like landed gudgeons. One shook his ribbon to free it from his watch chain and God alone knew what, to raise his quizzing-glass to his eye and fix Sherlock with a hard glare. Undeterred, Sherlock slid his Lupe-glass free of his pocket, to bring it to his much more penetrating eye in his turn and stare back at the man. In a chorus of, “well reallies,” the duo left. Sherlock’s smile was as sharklike as the men’s mouths had been codlike.

“And that’s you getting warmed up, isn’t it,” Lestrade affirmed, elbowing the others away before the jeweller chased them away with a besom.

“Quite amazing, isn’t it.”

At Sherlock’s pronouncement, Lestrade eyed John, who eyed him back. _Me?_ asked John’s glance, and Lestrade hid a grin at how quickly John had come to understand, to fit it. He gave a tiny shake of the head and said, “What is, Sherlock.”

And that was enough, enough to set himself off on his hobby-horse, harking back to the good old days when shops were shops, a necessity, a business, and so all at St Paul’s, the City, the business end of town. Now, though, with Shopping a pastime, and entire streets springing up to cater to that invidious leisure pursuit of conspicuous consumption, or even to that idle gawping at goods beyond one’s pockets that…

“John!” Lestrade signalled him back from his dawdling at the Repository of Arts, the famous print shop and gallery. “Any good ones?”

“New…print of the Runners. Sort of running after the Regent along a new, well-lit street while the rest of London is a dark hell-hole full of criminals.” John scrunched his face in apology. Lestrade scowled. He knew the populace’s opinion of the public officers, and the fact a few of them spent more time on private commissions, particularly for the Quality or His Highness than they did policing the streets was –

“Ruined a perfectly good area!” reached their ears, and they hurried to catch Sherlock up. Lestrade didn’t mind Piccadilly. He’d seen prints of the Continent, and reckoned it must look like this, with buildings in arcades with balustrades, with colonnades so that abroad you could shop even when it was sunny and here when it rained.

“So you don’t like the mix of commercial and residential?” John asked, looking at the ground floor shops topped with apartments, again sort of European-looking, with their carriage-height balconies.

“Not these! Full of complete idlers and dilettantes, sitting out all day to call to their equally dim-witted, vacuous chums, the idiotic dandy bachelors!”

“I say, Sherlock!” drawled a voice so dripping in money it clanged. “Sherlock, man!” And a languid hand, in which a crystal glass gleamed, sketched an effete wave from a fashionable terrace. “’Lock! Up here!”

“Come along, you poor viscount you.” Lestrade took the discomforted beanpole’s arm. “I’ll treat you to a water-ice at Gunter’s on Berkeley Square after.” He patted the slim arm and slipped his through it.

“It’s not all bad,” John argued, drinking in his fill as they trooped along Piccadilly to the Haymarket.

“Well, maybe this place isn’t wholly dreadful,” Sherlock admitted, meaning the famous tobacconist with its double shop front of two bow windows, each bearing five shelves holding enticing-looking jars and boxes.

“Fribourg & Treyer. ‘Purveyors to the Majestic Kings of Hanover and Belgium,”’ John read, obviously trying to fix it in his memory, not wanting to look like a greenhorn bumpkin writing it down.

“Umm.” Sherlock pushed open the door between the windows. “I may perchance have ventured here once or tw –”

“Oh, our very dear Viscount Holmes!” The short, rotund man in the huge wraparound white apron left his place behind the long polished-wood counter and hurried over, his cheeks flushing a ruddy red and his walrus moustaches seeming to furl even more tightly upward in his delight. He took Sherlock’s hand and shook it between both of his white-gloved ones. “Oh, it is good to – I was saying to Jerry it must be over a week since –”

“Indeed.” Sherlock had the grace to blush a little too.

“Regular, is he, sir?” Lestrade asked this latest descendant of either Fribourg or Treyer, with just the tiniest sprinkle of malice.

“Oh sir! One of the – And the nose! The nose on the viscount!”

He’d always liked Sherlock’s nose, truth be told. Not some huge the-bigger-the-better-than-you conk but a snub of one, a shape Lestrade had learnt was _retroussé_.

“You don’t take snuff,” he suddenly accused the owner of the slightly turned-up snout. No surprise really: if it was an indispensable element of etiquette for a gentleman to offer his snuff to any of his acquaintance he might encounter, with a man judged by the condition and quality of the snuff he offered, Sherlock Holmes would and did carry no snuff-box. He’d long claimed to prefer _smoking_ his tobacco, a much more plebian style, the manner that Lestrade. for instance. took his.

“Inhaling? Not recreationally, no. It can lead to polyps, a swelling in the nostril, and abuse, that is nasal sniffing of dry snuff, can lead to morphological and functional changes in the nasal mucosa. I’ve made a study.”

Lestrade’s, “In the morgue, no doubt?” was lost under Treyer’s (he bore a brass badge with his name) “Viscount, _please_!”

“I can identify every sort of snuff there is. It’s an invaluable tool for placing people at a scene. You remember the Stepford Smiler case.”

This time Lestrade’s slightly disbelieving, “Every sor –” hit against Treyer’s (who seemed determined that no one else should finish a sentence either) “The viscount can indeed identify every – Be they Havana base or Brazil snuff base – most people can’t even identify those – then his lordship can identify the varieties or sorts! Rio from Rome, Lisbon from Lima” – Lestrade was sort of jostled over to the various-sized porcelain jars on one shelf behind the counter, where he was amazed to see the hugest labelled MYCROFT HOLMES’S SORT – “Fruit from floral, scent from essence, flavour from aroma, mentholated from medicated –”

“It’s the same with blends of tea,” drawled the genius.

“The Rayleigh Tea Gardens case,” Lestrade recalled with a grin. “Only then you said the blend had come in on the clipper the _Cutty Sark_ , when it fact –”

“Arrrgh! There’s always something!” Sherlock waved a hand. “I’m beginning a study into saltpetre now.”

“As in gunpowder?” Captain Watson was interested enough to cease his close scrutiny of the wares and ask.

“Quite. Being able to identify the precise batch of saltpetre, or to give it its correct name, potassium nitrate, the primary ingredient in gunpowder, will be most useful in cases involving shootings.” Sherlock peered down his nose at his nails, then turned his hand around, his fingers hooked, to examine the nails more closely. But Lestrade didn’t miss the tiny peep of blue-green eyes up through a nestling tendril of fringe.

“Better expect more bangs and whizzes than usual at home, John,” he advised, his tone softer than a jibe and carrying no censure, and he knew the look in his eyes as he beheld the genius was a warm one. It…usually was. He realised he didn’t exactly know how much time Sherlock gave over to his ‘studies’, his exhaustive researches into various areas. One day…

“Sir? Would you like – ” Mr Treyer was eager to continue their tour of his establishment and his half-sentences lecture. No hardship – the establishment was dimmed and hushed, but more as a place of worship was, not because it was dark gloomy. It was full of wares, but not cramped. It felt clean and airy. They began under a wooden sign hanging high on the wall: _A gentleman who does not take snuff is a contradiction in terms._

“That’s you, all right,” Lestrade whispered to Sherlock. “You’re very contradictory, for a gentleman.”

“Yes, the First Gentleman of Europe!”’ announced their guide. “The Prince Regent himself.”

What, that _entire shelf_ was his blends? Oh yes, they learnt. An enthusiastic snuffer, one sort of snuff was not enough for him: he had blends for the morning, the afternoon and the evening. A room was dedicated in each of his palaces to the storage of his snuff jars, each with an attendant page whose sole responsibility was the care of the snuff supply. John was half turned away, and Lestrade saw he was actually taking notes now. And doing a little sketch of the shelf.

“And this man here is who we have to thank for the range.” Lestrade was so amazed at Treyer having completed a sentence, he almost missed Sherlock’s scowl. Almost, but caught the tail end. “You see, the regent, while sophisticated, isn’t, well –”

“His palate’s dead so he can’t only detect anything below rappee.” Sherlock scowled harder.

 

That was the darkest, coarsest snuff, the cheapest, Lestrade knew.

“I merely suggested milling half of it a little finer to vary the texture, make it exotic, and seasoning each batch with the strongest and most expensive flavours.”

“To make it very exotic,” Lestrade commented, grinning at Prinny buying what were dozens of variations on the same theme.

“Yes.” Sherlock’s scowl was now a grin, unholy and devilish in the hallowed portals of the emporium.

“Such as Attar of Roses, making this bestseller!” chirped and gestured Mr Freyer.

‘“Prince’s Mixture,”’ John read in awe.

“His Highness’s preferred blend.” This was called across the counter by a not quite as short or rotund man, one with massive sideburns instead of moustaches, and whom Lestrade could only suppose was Mr Fribourg.

“Nice of you to do them a favour,” Lestrade remarked to Sherlock, his tone bland, not fooled one bit. He knew how Sherlock operated, with his ‘helping out’ of people, and his…living high on the hog on the back of it. One day Lestrade would find out exactly what Sherlock had done for Mrs Hudson. He knew it had involved the murderous Mr Hudson and…Lestrade didn’t ever want to know. Oh, he’d missed a bit of Freyer’s raspberry-icing about Sherlock’s ability to suit potential clients with blends, creating Lord Petersham’s sort, the Marquess of Rawlins’s mix…

“Go on, then.” He gave the clever-nosed one a nudge. “Match…John with some of this pricey dust. Make _him_ a blend.”

“Hmm. Something to inflame, to excite… Dr Watson’s Afternoon Delight? Captain Watson’s Evening Pleasure?” murmured Sherlock, and Lestrade had to turn away to laugh. Getting himself under control, he missed Sherlock’s rapid-fire calling out of instructions and orders, but within a minute the three of them were seated on high stools around a small, high circular table in one of the recesses at the back of the shop and the flurry of rasps and graters and jars and flagons and weights and measures behind the counter seemed to have come to a head.

In the shape of a young man from somewhere backstage. A shop boy, Lestrade supposed, tall slim, uniformed, a curtain of black fringe swooping across his brow and needing to be shaken free of his eyes. He came towards them with a cheeky wink for one of their party. For Sherlock! And, Judas’s Chariot, the lad started to unbutton his shirt at the neck and hold the small box up, as if he intended to… No! Because with a sharp flick of the wrist, the fox was dismissed. A click of the fingers had a buxom girl heading for them, relieving their erstwhile, short-lived assistant of the porcelain snuff box.

“What… Who…” He couldn’t, wouldn’t go on. Wouldn’t stare after the lithe male figure making its perky, swinging-hipped way back into the depths of the store.

“No one. Important,” reached his ears, and a quick frown of Sherlock’s had the shop girl’s hand dropping like a stone from the neckline she’d been pulling lower, as she raised the box high. Did she mean to sprinkle it on her…person? Was that… Lestrade and John watched florin-eyed as the girl rolled down a white glove to drop a pinch of the snuff on the inside of her wrist and hold her hand under John’s nose with a slight bob and a husky, “Sir? Will you?”

“The blends are better when warmed to body heat.” John was quick to parrot some information from their lecture. And were they better inhaled off a young male collar-bone sharp enough to balance a soup plate on, or a plump young bosom soft enough to sleep on, Lestrade wondered.

“Remember snuff is absorbed through the mucus membrane, so a pinch only needs to get into the nose,” warned Sherlock. “If you sniff it, it’ll get into the sinuses and you’ll –”

“ATISHHHOOO! AAAAATISHHOO!”

“Sneeze,” Lestrade completed for Sherlock and for the hapless John, now burying his face in the enormous handkerchief pulled from the woman’s cleavage, and so no doubt body heat as well. Very heated, from what he could see of John’s red face.

“Oh, a virgin,” observed the woman with a sniff as if she’d inhaled the product too. “Why didn’t you say? I’d have been gentler.”

Leaving them to it, whatever _it_ was, Lestrade followed Sherlock in hopping off the high stool to investigate the premises. A few minutes’ questioning told him all the employees had been there for a good long while, were all of good character, the ingredients and equipment could only be touched by the staff…

“But the snuff for White’s comes from here?” he asked into the silence his news of the death by snuff had caused.

“Oh yes. Daily for freshness. We supply them mainly with their house blend, White’s Number One, sir,” answered a subdued Treyer.

“Which is in fact merely Martinique, plain unmixed snuff from the leaf,” Sherlock added, sneaking up behind the group. “A long-standing bestseller.” He span a square silver box high into the air and caught it.

“Do you do that a lot? Repackage a popular snuff as an exclusive sort to a swanky place?” Lestrade asked.

“Oh yes. An example being White’s Number Two.” Sherlock answered for them, tossing then sniffing a second box he pulled free of his coat. “Martinique with a vanilla flavouring. And White’s Number Three.”

“Martinique with…” Although Sherlock held out a third container for him, Lestrade was none the wiser. The box was empty, anyway.

“Bordeaux, sir,” finished Mr Fribourg.

“Sherlock, did you steal those club snuff boxes?” Lestrade didn’t know why he bothered asking. Any more than he bothered wondering why Sherlock’s coats all had enormous pockets.

“Borrowed, Lestrade, borrowed. All three of them. These two, still containing remnants, and this empty one. From which any snuff has been tipped free.” The gentleman thief laid them out in a line.

“Tipped? Couldn’t it have been…used, like the others, and all gone?” Lestrade’s heart thumped in that way it did when things…didn’t add up.

“And the box wiped clean? Yes. Look.” Lestrade took the magnifying glass held out. “You can see a tiny thread of white linen from a hasty cleaning. No; tipped.”

“To…stop anyone knowing what had been in there.” Lestrade swallowed. The death…hadn’t looked right, and this was…all wrong. “Except we know what was in there. The Number Three. And your friend would’ve identified it as not being correct, if it wasn’t.”

“So whatever was added was added after, when the braying idiots were competing to shove the most up their snouts.” Sherlock nodded.

“Added?” Lestrade was starting to say when John came back to them, still being helped by the female assistant.

“See you tomorrow!” he announced as the woman dropped his hand, dropped a curtsey and a wink and left. “Did you know, there’s an etiquette of the correct use of the snuff-box and the precise dictates for offering snuff to a stranger, a friend or a mistress, based on their degree of familiarity? I’ve signed up for a class in the correct steps of the ritual for offering snuff in company. Should be…” He trailed off his gabbling at the looks on their faces.

“Lesson number one, don’t sneeze over the staff,” Lestrade said, a little sourly, the memory of the male assistant assailing him. More particularly, the thought of Sherlock and the young, slim, male assistant _assaulting_ him. And the whole thing seemed decadent to him. Inhaling snuff of another person’s body. He…might even take to the snuff habit, could even see himself taking a pinch from the sprinkling dusted into Sherlock’s belly-button, that sweet cavity he liked to dip a finger in. He couldn’t deny he’d imagining smearing apricot comfiture in that inviting hollow, to scoop out with his tongue and spread and lick and –

“ _Really?_ ”

He blushed at the smooth drawl, but Sherlock was answering John. He hoped. Knew the rum cove could mind read, but… Flushed and aroused, he somehow got through the leave-taking and so out into the Piccadilly street again. He didn’t dare look up and meet Sherlock’s eye, so kept his head down, even through Sherlock’s harangue against “the megalith, the behemoth” that was Carlton House and how Sherlock knew, just knew the regent would get tired of it soon and knock it down, probably by stamping on it. No, Lestrade kept his heated face down and his gaze fixed on the floor, watching as the large smooth stones of the new pavement become the rough pebbled dash of the piazza.

Even if not for that, the thickening, deepening noise would have told Lestrade where they were heading. The rumble of wagons and dray, the trundle of carriages, the squeals of animals and the screech of street musicians scraping at fiddles and beating at tambourines screamed Covent Garden. Off to work then. He supposed Sherlock was, well, probably not walking him to work out of companionship, but more likely as he needed something from Bow Street, across the market. Or wanted to show Number Four to John.

“Angelo’s first,” came in Sherlock’s rich murmur. “We need…information.”

Of course.

“And luncheon.”

True – Lestrade hadn’t broken his fast yet. His stomach was thinking his throat’d been cut. He couldn’t remember Sherlock being so keen to sample Angelo’s greasy-spoon fare, though. Even if it was free…to him.

“Hey, you must like Covent Garden, then, with your views on those new shopping-as-leisure streets destroying local communities,” Lestrade commented, as the idea came to him. He nodded at the bustle and hubbub. “This bucks that trend, doesn’t it? This was a nobs’ area once, wasn’t it, all town mansions and a designer church in twin piazzas. Now all the swanks’ve ankled it away, chased off by the market, and the fine old buildings are shops and taverns!”

“And _worse_ ,” John whispered, roving his gaze over the once-stately buildings with their majestic staircases. “This square must be crawling with figures of the London underworld. But isn’t it remarkable that here we have an intermingling, a co-existence, of all businesses, all colours, all creeds, all walks of life, nobility, thieves, theatre folk –”

“Writers,” Sherlock suggested, with nary a blink.

“Harlots” – John was half a century out in his terms – “all jostling and shouting together, sharing space, sharing air in these tumbledown booths and open stalls? I can hear the clink of metal patterns on cobbles, protecting shoes from offal and –”

He was romanticising of course, like all writers. Lestrade saw this sight every morning, riding slowly through, taking the measure, the temperature, almost, of the neighbourhood, of the city. He always had, right from his time on the Foot Patrol to Day Patrol to the Runners. The square was his London, his map, his clock. He wished John could see that, see it as he did, see the day wake to life. From the dawn bells of St Paul’s ringing through the square, stirring it from sleep, and the chundle of the market carts and the cries of the muffin sellers and newspaper boys taking up as soon as the bells died down. Then the ‘seven o’clock scents’, as he thought of the smells of hot bread and rolls that curled up from the baker’s. Then you knew it was eight – people drifted into the coffeehouses and the streets thickened, lumpened. whatever the fancy word was. Then it was nine, the workday proper, bringing with it the gathering of people outside Bow Street, waiting for the clerks and officers to open up. Ten – that was mid-morning magistrates’ court…

No, John wouldn’t see those changes, those shifts. He would see the deliberately carnivalesque scene, today enlivened by a pair of jugglers grabbing fruit and veg to throw up and tumble in the air. Oh and a white-faced tumbler, seemingly made of rubber and the… Ooohh…

“Do come along! Lestrade, what…” Sherlock turned back.

He was staring at the fishmongers, the men deftly cleaning and gutting the catch and wrapping it. Eel! Strung up to hang like decorations. Back home they were dorymen, and the catch proper fish, not like those stringy wriggles of eels and –

“Do come up. I wish you both wouldn’t gawp like country-joskins,” came in an acerbic bark.

Yet when he shook off the past and caught up, he almost overtook Sherlock, standing stock-still as he was, gawking in the open doorway of a herb and root shop, to jump when John tapped on the glass window, pointing at the glass containers of wriggling leeches.

“I say, no time for ogling!” Lestrade imitated in a velvet drawl, causing Sherlock to splutter he wasn’t, he hadn’t been, this was a scientific recognisance and…

On seeing the tiny walnut-faced fortune-teller approaching, one wizened hand holding her flouncy red skirts clear of the floor and the other claw outstretched to grab at sleeves, Lestrade wound his arms around his companions and bore them away before the old gypsy woman could so much as shake a gold hoop earring at them. Her fortunes were always the same anyway. “Not that way, John.” He steered him away from the mouth of an alley. “That leads to a particularly murky court-yard containing a er, house of ill-repute.”

“Talking of which,” Sherlock remarked, “We must take John to Elizabieta’s before too long. I’ve been meaning to –”

“No.” He stopped for a second and glared.

“What? Don’t you think he’d enjoy Madame Elizabieta Wenceslaus’s _Galleria_?” Sherlock wasn’t fazed by Lestrade's stone-hard refusal.  “Nothing ill about _that_ place.”

“I… Oh, what’s going on here?” He sounded like the public officer he was as he attempted to sidetrack his two walking-mates by pointing to the monolithic pillars of the opera-house ahead. the four column’s towering height made the swarm of people massing there look like ants. “A protest? These gatherings can turn into mobs.”

“Can’t be anything to do with The Woman.” John shrugged. “She’s on at Drury Lane.”

“Admittance ticket price increase,” said Sherlock. His sharp ears had caught the barking and braying about _old prices_ and _too high_.

All in all, what the very unromantic shoving and shunting, Lestrade was glad to reach that old lag Angelo’s and even gladder that taking one look at Lestrade, and his hand resting negligently on his brass-topped staff, a party of three near the back of the poorly lit eatery pushed back their chairs and slinked off. “More than one way to get free food here,” he said, nudging Sherlock.

Sherlock cleared the table by dumping the half-full plates and cups on the nearest table. “Sorry,” Lestrade said to its occupants.

“Is there some havey-cavey business going on in here?” John whispered, although he’d have been better off raising his voice against the backdrop of clinking eating irons, clanging tankards and voices a lot less hushed than those of the White’s patrons of earlier.

“If there is, we wouldn’t have far to go to compare their mugs with the wanted posters, would we,” Lestrade replied, jerking a thumb towards Bow Street. He relied on Angelo to keep all and any shag-baggery…to a reasonable minimum.

“Angelo’s more of a poacher turned gamekeeper,” Sherlock explained, submitting to a hearty handshake and shoulder slapping from the proprietor and introducing John. “And bring us the papers!” he called after the man.

“Is he really Italian?” John asked.

“Erm, let’s say…he helps out when they’re busy,” Sherlock replied, mystifying his guest. “Ah. Good.” This to the table boy proffering an armful of newspapers. “The _London Chronicle_. Here, Lestrade.”

“The _London Record_. Cheers for that.”

“John. Here. One for you.”

“The _London Account_.” John shook his pages free. “I sometimes think all the papers just copy one another.”

“The morning ones, yes,” agreed Sherlock. “And these are relatively upmarket. Much better than the _Bugle_. Or the _Herald_.

“Or the _Trumpet_.” Lestrade shuddered.

It was always…nice, spending time with Sherlock, when occasion presented itself, Lestrade acknowledged. Out, dining or drinking, walking or talking, usually connected to a case, or in, assisting or listening. This, this taking of a meal in relative ease, his legs stretched out for Sherlock to rest his crossed-ankled limbs over them while they relaxed over the papers, was –

“Another one!” Sherlock slammed his page down and stabbed at it with his finger.

“Oh, were we looking for something?” Lestrade asked.

“Trouble,” Sherlock said.

“And you usually find it,” Lestrade observed. “What’s this?”

“An account of a very stupid death. A particularly very stupid death. A –”

“Sherlock.” Lestrade brought his hand down on top of Sherlock’s. “Just read it, yeah?”

He vaguely recalled the story from a few days’ ago, and he had to agree, it was stupid. And the title… ‘“Gone to the Dogs’? How is that a suitable header for a story about a man who was caught in the crush along the gallery at a dog-fight and fell into the Pit? Oh. Langdale Pike. Oh course.”

“Could’ve been worse.” Sherlock drained his cup and his agile-fingered hand insinuated itself around Lestrade’s still half-full one. “Could’ve been ‘The Pits’, for instance. It took place at the Westminster Pit, John. Another favoured spot for leisure and gambling, at which butchers and barristers, everyone from the the Upper Ten Thousand to the belowstairs mingle. The P –”

“I know what it is. Those places, those pubs or yards or even these purpose-built venues for blood sports, all be they cock-fights or bear-bearing or any form of cruelty, are worse than barbaric.” His lips were thinned and his breathing fast. What must he have seen, Lestrade thought suddenly, out in the theatre of war?

“Who was it fell?” he asked, after a minute.

“Oh, some clinking Cit or other.” Sherlock waved a hand.

“Self-made City merchant or not, it’s a horrible way to go. Were there dogs…”

“Um. A bulldog versus a bull terrier. Tore him to pieces. But the worse was apparently some wag in the gallery, calling out he’d lay a florin on the trader against the hounds, that the merchant was the more cut-throat, practiced in clawing his way up.”

“God’s holy blood,” Lestrade muttered. He imagined the man, proud that he’d made it, made his pile, trying to take his place in society, half-crazed up in the Gods with the bloodlust and the screaming…only to fall from the heights. He shoved the remains of his repast away. “I’d better get to work,” he said at last. Untangling from Sherlock, he made his way over to Angelo behind the counter, wanting to see that the old dry-boots made an entry under _Lestrade_ on the tally-paper headed _Bow Street_ spiked on the chit nail. Not that he understood the innkeeper’s system of dashes and dots. He wondered if Sally did, when it came to settling-up day at the end of the month, but it wouldn’t do to be accused of receiving ‘free’ goods or services from a place of business and have the public speculating on what the supplier got in return. Not with the way people felt about anything they saw as ‘police’.

“Inspector.” Yeah, like calling them overseers or administrators. Public officers, that tried to give a better impression. “Had another of your lot in earlier. First thing,” Angelo continued.

Lestrade shrugged. Many, for sure.

“Nah, one we don’t often see. Hoighty-toighty.”

Lestrade shrugged again. Could be any magistrate. Court called for three at a time, meaning a rotation of the two lesser ones; the chief was permanent. Well, when he was there…

“Looks as if he’s got a bad smell under his nose.” Angelo tapped the _Bow Street_ chit, and Lestrade saw…a caricature headed each column. Charming, he didn’t think, if it was unlikely Angelo could write. Sally could have – Angelo’s meaty finger tapped the column hastily added to the end, this one topped by a rudimentary charcoal sketch of a narrow, pinched nose and thin, pursed lips framed by a sideburns beard, and behind Lestrade, Sherlock said, “ _Anderson._ ”

“In _here_?” Lestrade could imagine Anderson senior stopping off for a small-beer or a liquor. He was happy to chat and would see patients in need anywhere.

“Oh yeah. Been on an affair of honour. Him being a doctor and official and all. And discreet.” Angelo nodded.

“All four are debatable qualities, attributed to him,” Sherlock said. “Hmm. Putney Heath, of course. Would explain the meadow grass stuck to his trousers. So there was a fatality, and he was shaken by it.” He smirked at Angelo’s openmouthed amazement.

“The closeness to Bow Street and him needing a drink after it,” Lestrade murmured for John, but loud enough for Sherlock to catch.

“The seconds are supposed to try to stop any Wogdon’s Affairs.” John had abandoned naïve breathlessness and was striving for worldly.

“That was the problem. They didn’t use Wogdons for the duel. Bet they’s wishing they did have had though, like all the rest of the toffery, and not Mantons.”

“Mantons! Talk about hair-triggers!” John was wide-eyed again. “And talk about expensive. About fifty guineas for a brace of Manton duelling pistols. So, the duel was Quality, eh. Hmm.” He sounded rather…like Sherlock.

“Yeah. Them battling Morley cousins.”

“Oh, Morley-St Bartolph and Morley-Colkirk. Two branches of the same family,” said John, nodding. “Yes, I might have seen an article about them somewhere.”

“John, do stop reading the _Illustrated London Life_ ,” Sherlock advised.

“Seems someone said one of them cousins made an insult to the Hon Swanky-Lady Sumfing or Other, who’s just reached an understanding with the other of ’em cousins, who had to avenge her.” Angelo made a play of covering his mouth for secrecy, and Lestrade could just see Anderson standing there doing just that, blurting out the details of his encounter with his betters.

“Pretty rank to have actually shot the opponent though,” came his comment.

“Nah, they was gonna go firing into the air.” (“Deloping,” John whispered.) “Just, one of them fancy new pistols went off without warning when he was raising it up. Before the hanky drop even.”

‘“Pistols for two, breakfast for one.”’ John breathed out the old saying.

“Oh, Anderson will give it as an accident,” Sherlock dismissed.

“Well, it was,” Lestrade reasoned. “It’ll probably be reported as target practice. A _duel_? No one wants that. ”

“Mainly you. Too much paperwork,” said Sherlock.

“Fighting a duel over a mere _comment_ , though, not over taking liberties with a lady.” John frowned. “Times are strange, aren’t they. It’s like they say, there’s an uncanny mood about. The war, deaths… a funereal pall and yet the pace is frenetic.”

“You’d know. You have your finger on the pulse. Being a doctor,” Sherlock tacked on to his drawl.

_Good save,_ said Lestrade’s smirk.

“I’m off to Barts,” Sherlock announced. “An Irregular will find me, should you…need me.” He leaned forwards, closer. “And you owe me, Lestrade. Didn’t you promise me…a treat, earlier?”

“An ice,” John reminded the silent Lestrade.

“I’ll collect later.” And Sherlock strode off in a swirl of coattails. John looked from him to Lestrade, and his face coloured, just a tinge.

“I have to get to my bank.” John coughed to tame his voice. “See my man. The new practice…”

Wondering if John would have enough money to buy into a smart Harley Street surgery, Lestrade headed for Number Four, Bow Street.


	4. Chapter Four

Lestrade’s arrival confused his errand boy, Frank, sitting on the steps outside the off-white four-story façade of Number Four, as he didn’t arrive on a horse for Frank to stable. Frank lowered the hand he’d held out for the reins, blinking both eyes, the good one and the lazy one, set like currants in his pasty bun of a face under his lank fringe parted like a theatre curtain. His potato nose twitched and his rubbery lips moved as he tried to form a question.

“Just take this instead,” Lestrade advised, tossing Frank the wrapped slice of pie he’d got him from Angelo’s. Frank’s whole face moved upwards in a smile which started at his doughy chin and climbed slowly.

It was only when Lestrade mounted the stairs, nodded to the clerk on duty in the hall desk and turned into the Ready Room opposite the courtroom that his injuries of last night made themselves felt. Funny that. Well, not really. About as funny as Old Bailey’s reaction when Lestrade walked in to a chorus of _Afternoon Sir_ and placed his stick of office in the umbrella stand with the rest.

“ _Squuuawwk! Screeeech! Gilbert, mon amour!_ ”

“He’s here,” Bradstreet said without taking his feet off his desk or looking up from his newspaper as the house parrot of Number Four, the Magistrate’s Court, shook its cage high on the wall until the metal door opened and it could swoop across the room to perch on Lestrade’s shoulder, gripping with its sharp claws and rubbing its even sharper beak up and down his ear.

“ _Argent agent!_ ” shrieked Old Bailey, right in Lestrade’s lug hole, making him wince.

“I rue the day you buggers discovered he could talk,” he commented.

“ _She,_ ” came from Bradstreet again. “Your fancy piece.”

Old Bailey _was_ fancy, his dull brown head, back and tail relieved by his turquoise abdomen, blue rump and bright yellow markings on his wings. Lestrade scratched the yellow tuft on the top of Bailey’s head, making the bird scream so loudly with pleasure Lestrade’s ear rang. “ _Bugger me!_ ” cried Bailey. Sometimes Lestrade also rued the day that Indies sailor had left his pet behind when he’d stopped off here at the magistrates’ court _en route_ to the second court that had given its name to the exotic bird. Could’ve been worse, he always thought. The parrot could have become known as Newgate Prison, the mariner’s final destination. He fished a sunflower seed from his pocket, to be thanked with a whole chorus of cries until Old Bailey busied himself cracking it.

“Not much on?” Lestrade enquired, seeing most of the officers who were in were sitting back, feet up, and Hopkins was even reading the _Morning Chronicle_. Only Simms was dealing with a matter, a young woman who wept and struck him with her tiny fists while a rakish-looking man in handcuffs cursed and swore and was retrained by constables. That missing, possibly abducted, heiress had been found, it seemed, and it looked like she’d got herself leg-shackled to her abductor. That would take some unriveting. He didn’t envy her parents.

His gaze was caught as always by the enormous coloured map of London which took up most of one wall with its lines of streets and squares and dots of important buildings all labelled. He looked over the wanted posters – nothing new, God be thanked. Lestrade glanced at the big blackboard listing the half-a-dozen detective officers and their status of IN or OUT and READY AT –   and ASSISTED BY CONSTABLE –. His constable, Dimmock, he noted, rushed in from the far door, looking anguished at not having been ready and waiting when Lestrade arrived. He sprang to the board and produced his own jealously guarded stick of chalk to amend Lestrade’s details.

“Ready in fifteen minutes?” Lestrade queried, reading the filled in square.

“The Staverton case, sir,” Dimmock said by way of explanation, arranging Lestrade’s chair at his desk just so, and his own stool to one side of it. He shuffled his sheaf of papers and sharpened his pencils with his pocket knife, ready to write up Lestrade’s report. Lestrade groaned, and Old Bailey shrieked companionably. This would take some careful redacting not to raise too much dust, but to cover himself, and hopefully not in a substance far more noxious than dust.

“Gregson still not back, I see.” No sign of the tall, tow-headed, broad-shouldered –

“Still in Brighton. Still on Prinny duty, ” said Bradstreet, rubbing it in.

God above, that smooth blade Gregson would be able to retire soon, way he must be raking it in as the regent’s private officer. Not content with guarding the private club when His Highness gambled, he’d gone on to standing behind the regent holding his purse, the prince claiming his ‘Runner’ brought him luck, and then to accompanying him on jaunts. He’d become foppified at this rate, all, “Prithee, sirrah,” and “Pon my Sam.” He watched as Bradstreet elbowed Hopkins so he could filch his newspaper and hit him with it before taking it to read. And these were the men the public talked of in their coffeehouses, the glamorous Runners, the heroic and brave men of action.

“Lord Byron’s been in looking for you,” came from Bradstreet, and Lestrade saw the man had been reading through the statement Lestrade had made out in the early hours of the morning about the Elgin to-do. “Wants to challenge you.” He mimed swishing a blade about.

“Does he.” Lestrade’s tone at the jibe was repressive. Bradstreet was abrasive with envy at Lestrade’s seniority, for all the good it did Lestrade. It mostly meant picking up the slack, like now, hurrying through his report of the morning’s case to free himself up to do what the chief magistrate had left undone. Sir Presley Lennox was a career bureaucrat with various government posts who tended to sweep in for the mid-morning and mid-afternoon courts – and sweep straight out again, conveyed to another office, another stipend. Oh, there was no denying he was an able magistrate, with a thorough knowledge of the law and process – when he was about. And when he wasn’t, well, there was always Miss Sally Donovan.

Nobody knew quite why or how she’d been taken on, but clerk and records keeper at Number Four she was, and a lot more accurate and clever in her work than most of ’em, detectives, constables or clerks. Wild speculation abounded, especially with her being black, from her being Lennox’s by-blow to his convenient. Lestrade thought, if he thought about it at all, that she’d simply applied for the post when it was advertised and Lennox had been too astounded at the mere sight of her to utter so much as a peep, so she assumed she’d won the post and simply started working. And he was glad she had.

“Sir.”

Like now. He’d barely reached the end of the narrow corridor squeezed alongside the ground-floor courtroom and was mentally debating carrying on through the baize door into the kitchen for a cup of coffee when he spied her coming down the back stairs, her hands full of a cardboard file. Oh yes, printer’s day.

“Afternoon, Sally. All finished?” He didn’t really need to ask. Sally always had the notes sent from mayors and magistrates all over England compiled and copied ready to go to press on time. How would the descriptions of offenders and large and details of their crimes get into the weekly _Hue and Cry_ if not? Then there’d be nothing in the police news gazette for the public to be warned against and be gleefully alarmed at. “That fake quack still up to no good? Is he still in the Midlands?” He sort of admired the mountebank’s cheek, if not his crimes.

“Nothing about him this week, sir. But I’m wondering… I thought it was escalating last time. Look at this. Sir. If you’d be so good…”

“Sal.” He was always telling her not to stand on ceremony with him. He scanned the report. “A _tutor_?”

“A fake tutor who absconded with valuables from the house.” She nodded. “See the description? It could fit Norton, if he’d changed his hair and posture. It’s the same situation. And that’s another thing. His aliases.” They were walking up the stairs as they spoke.

“Go on.”

“Well, I thought there was a pattern. I had a few minutes free.” Lestrade doubted that, what with her listing the occupants of the prisoners’ van bearing criminals to and from Newgate, and compiling and filing the detectives’ reports, and taking depositions from plaintiffs and accused and managing the monies. “So I studied the atlases. His names, Lindsey, Shipston, Coleshill? They’re all places in Warwickshire. West Midlands. I reckon he’s actually from Norton, his first alias. Could even be his real name. It’s not that big a place – someone must know him. We could send a Runner…”

“Himself won’t think the case justifies it.” He hated to dim that bright light shining in her big brown eyes. “No one’s offering any reward so far. But it’s a sound idea. What we could do is to write to the mayors of those boroughs, explaining it. Explaining your thoughts. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s a pity –” She stopped herself. Had she been about to criticise their boss? No; Lestrade half thought she’d been going on to say, “ _That I can’t go there and solve this myself._ ” And he’d agree.

“Oh, sir!” She shook her head, but not quickly enough to prevent Lestrade pushing open the door of the chief magistrate’s chambers. He used a tiny corner of it as his office, Lennox being too penny-pinching and position-conscious to outfit him one. Lestrade kept well away from the tables bearing the court briefs and order-papers and took pleasure in the shelves of books, the globe of the world, the maps of England and London and the most recent additions, the floor plans of London’s most important buildings. They’d started with the Bank of England, then Carlton House and Windsor Castle, and now had the two largest theatres up too. Couldn’t have ’em down below in the Ready Room, not with procession of shavers and clinkers they had through there. The criminal classes had enough schemes and stratagems of their own – no need to give them any more ideas. And best to keep their tools and aids away from the law-abiding public, those people would carped on about the increasing government control of street life.

“It’s Sir Lennox!”

What, not just dashing in in time to glance through the cases before mid-afternoon court? No – he was there, large as life and twice as natural. The reason became clear when Lestrade entered and saw Anderson.

“No point gainsaying me,” came his greeting to Lestrade as he turned and saw him. “I’m not ordering an autopsy. I’m releasing the body to the parents.”

“I ordered it sent here for further investigation!” Lestrade protested. “There were suspicious circum –”

Anderson’s somewhat squeaky, “Who’s the doctor here, eh?” came alongside Sir Lennox’s scratchy whisper of, “Not enough for the King’s Bench to approve the expense!”

And that was it, Lestrade knew. In addition to Anderson’s firm, fixed belief in his medical expertise, if the outlay wasn’t seen as necessary by the Chief Justice at the Quarter Sessions, as coroner, albeit acting, he’d be responsible for the cost himself, and doubtless arguing with Sir Lennox for reimbursement.

“And I think I’m not alone in feeling a _little_ tired of you public officers trumping up crimes and cases where there aren’t any, just to winkle out pieces of silver either from a prosecution society or the official reward fees!”

“Sherlock’s right,” Lestrade said eventually, after a cold, bitter silence in which he controlled his temper and his fists. “Everyone that meets you does want to land one on you. Hard. Only I won’t. Not this time. Despite the insult I could call you out for. If it wasn’t an illegal act to participate in.” He heard a choked-off noise at his back that could have been a gasp, could have been a giggle. Yeah, challenging Anderson appealed. As did dropping him in it for having taken part in a duel that very day – if Lestrade had solid proof. “Some men aren’t cheaters and twisters. You perhaps wouldn’t know.”

Oh, some Runners shaped things their own way, he was sure. The five shillings a day retainer wasn’t much, and it felt much better augmented by fees paid for catching criminals or taking on private commissions.

“Just as some men are competent doctors and decent citizens. And that you should know – you have your father as an example.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” asked the coroner, his tone more nasal than ever.

“Jesus Christ!” Lestrade yelled, beyond angry. “Are you truly so stupid you can’t understand that?”

“It’s an insult. Sir,” explained Sally to Anderson, her voice bright and the _sir_ late. “The meaning was that _you_ are the opposite of those things.”

One day, thought Lestrade, I’ll get to the bottom of what went on between them. In the face of Anderson’s spluttering and gurgling he said, “Tell you what, why not challenge me over the insult. I understand you know all about duels, yeah?”

“No one under my purview is to take part in an illegal act!” The voice of the chief magistrate brought them all to a halt. The man stood, his long sandy eyebrows and long sandy moustaches bristling. The sparse mutton-shop whiskers and scant hair on his head tried its best to bristle, and his ears and exposed dome where the hair had retreated to the sides reddened. It was almost unfair, his hair loss, as if his pate had sacrificed its covering for the profuse eyebrows and moustache. He stood, jowls quivering and his head on one side, the bags under his large brown eyes deepening as they did when he was thinking.

“Good sirs, I demand this enmity stops here and now!”

Yes, you don’t have time to deal with it, thought Lestrade.

And as if picking up on that thought, Sally said, “Sir Lennox, shall I walk you to court? Would you be so kind as to remind me of this afternoon’s cases on the way down?”

Sir Lennox babbled and burbled almost as much as Anderson had, at this reminder he was almost late. And it was the other way round, Lestrade knew, watching the lowly clerk gather up the pile of briefs and relevant law books as the mighty chief magistrate wigged and robed himself. Lestrade took the heavy books and documents from Sally, leaving her with her compiled reports for the printer and listened to her read the chief magistrate the précis she’d made of the cases on the docket, her summaries economical and clear. He walked with them not just to relieve Sally of a heavy load and to escape the useless coroner – he was giving evidence in the first case. And it was a popular one. For days now the court room of Number Four had been packed, with the constables trading and threatening one another to be on duty and control access – and charge entry fees to the court room created from the building’s original central space, its ballroom.

“Soon be time to face the music, detective,” said that tiny, underfed clerk whose name Lestrade could never remember. He didn’t have long to wait and suffer the gallows humour of his fellow officers in the tiny Withdrawing Room before he was called in. Johns managed to get in his usual, “Shall we dance, eh?” as he opened the door.

Lestrade had almost forgotten they’d finally got a low wooden fence in to divide the large, bare, chandelier-lit room in two. That old rope division had been in place for years, putting Lestrade in mind of the rope enclosures at Tattersall’s, the horse sale-yard. He remembered Sherlock saying there was a similar ‘rope around a bare room with a poor floor’ décor at Almack’s, that exclusive club called the seventh heaven of the fashionable world. Lestrade didn’t know whether to believe it. He’d never been, of course. Couldn’t really imagine Sherlock there, where young debutantes were paraded around like fillies looking for a new owner. Oh, had that been the joke?

No time to ponder, not with all this. He took his place in the farther roped-off section, scanning the nearer one out of habit, looking over those waiting for their turn before the panel of three judges up there behind their wooden desks on the raised platform, the witnesses and…the curious. He frowned at a slim, fashionably dressed veiled woman sitting in one of the prized front-row seats right up against the rail that were usually the province of the reporters from the rags whose accounts the papers would start printing within minutes of the end of the hearing.

It wasn’t… Was it? He…didn’t know how he felt about The Woman’s, well, _pursuit_ wasn’t the right word. Buggered if he knew the right one. Wondered what she’d paid to get her seat. As he looked, he fancied he could see blood-red lips mouthing, _good luck_.

Still, he’d rather look at La Adler than that sod of a thief-taker standing in the railed box in the centre of the room. The Merchant’s Mercy, Lestrade’s arse. He only hoped all those Sherlock called Cits who’d lauded the private citizen when he set up shop – literally – as a service where victims of robbery could register details of their stolen possessions, which he’d promised to recover, felt stupid now. Now, when it revealed the Jack Sprat was not just running after the lost goods but…running a lucrative sideline as a receiver of stolen goods, and more often than not either had the shopkeepers’ missing property himself already, or knew someone who did. And that someone would either ‘pay’ for his temerity or join the fold.

Some of the crowd were still in the hero worship stage, Lestrade noted, although most were _for shaming_ and _fie_ _on youing_. Maybe those Londoners that had lambasted the Runners for their “failure to protect the merchant classes” would think again now. Fat chance. Lestrade had only been one of many players in this drama, and a fair whack of that time had been spent persuading Sherlock not to go undercover into the London underworld to infiltrate the network. Lestrade had come across the madman actually togged up, outfitted as a ‘gentleman of the streets’, all poised to dash into a Rookery with pocketfuls of ‘stolen goods’ to fence to the ringleader, making his acquaintance that way.

Locking Sherlock up for the weekend in the Bow Street strong room had dissuaded him. Lestrade had deemed it only fair he lock himself in, too, alongside the miscreant. He wanted to grin at the memory as he took his place in the witness stand, in front and slightly to the left of the magistrates, but of course didn’t. Couldn’t. Wanted this over this, wanted that bastard dealt with, no matter what. But it was tiring though: going over the case was like redoing it all, reliving the interrogating of witnesses, the examining of property and crime scenes, the checking of alibis, the holding of the identification parades, the interviews with lodging house owners and public conveyance drivers…

“Lord Elgin’s lost some of his marbles.”

Lestrade sagged against the side door he’d just left the courtroom by, staring at Hopkins. If it had been Bradstreet making the remark, he’d have suspected some would-be joke, but Hopkins?

“Could’ve told you that,” he answered, just in case it was the latest gab doing the rounds of Number Four.

“No, he has. Just sent his man in to report. One of the boxes from the Continong didn’t make it to his Mayfair mansion from the docks.”

“Stolen during the delivery.” Lestrade nodded. There were enough people milling around the wharf at the nest of times, and yesterday… Well. More like some new attraction at Astley’s Circus. “He should’ve paid for guards. London’s changed a bit since he went away on his tours and trips. We were only there to keep the peace. We said.”

“What with all the hubbub and hullaballoo.” Hopkins nodded in turn. “Told him, we did. But they’ll find those goods too particular to fence. Not like it was some jewels you could break up of some gold to melt down.”

“Oh, there’ll be a notice in a paper soon enough, when they figure it out,” Lestrade told him. At the man’s puzzled face he said, “Probably in the Morning Chronicle. ‘Precious ancient Grecian goods found. If grateful to a finder, apply at…’ And so on. For his lordship to buy ’em back,” he clarified. Hopkins wasn’t the sharpest… “Get Sally and Dimmock to keep an eye out in a day or two. They’re fly enough to read between the lines.” And could, well, _read_.

 

 _Police, punishment, prison._ He trod his weary way home to that litany, feeling every step of the 1.9 miles, wishing he’d come in on his horse. Would it do any good, getting that underworld kingpin turned off? Wouldn’t another just rise up to take his place? Well, not if Lestrade could help it. And the theft of the Elgin Marbles, as he’d started calling them. The timing, the opportunistic nature… What did Sherlock call it, oh yeah, the means, motive and opportunity. It all seemed… He didn’t want to think any of his lot had been responsible. Sherlock would –

 _Sherlock. Again. Always. Sherlock._ His feet beat out a tattoo and thoughts of that tall, slim-hipped, curly-haired, porcelain-skinned body, with its ever-changing eyes and quicksilver intelligence propelled Lestrade through the gathering dusk. How could it be otherwise? He was going home to him, for Christ’s sake, to a house full of him, even when he wasn’t there, to a house warmed by him. Literally: 221 was a warm house, heated, in a way Lestrade had never seen anywhere else, by heated flues running under the floors, some carrying the hot water for the showers. There were even vents here and there, making hot spots. Oh, they might be part of the checks and failsafe systems, those gusts of steam released from time to time when a certain temperature was reached, but they were pleasant. Sybaritic. Decadent, Sherlock allowed; he’d taken the idea from the ancient hypocausts.

Lestrade stood for a second in the hall over a hot spring’s geyser, as he sometimes thought of it, letting the warmth envelop him. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t say it was like being wrapped in Sherlock’s arms… His escaping chortle brought their housekeeper out of her rooms, staring in anxiety.

“Sorry. No reason for alarm,” Lestrade said. “I was just thinking of how the house is touched by Sherlock’s genius.” He stamped, indicting the underfloor heating system.

“Just like the Romans,” Mrs Hudson parroted. “But with English coal.”

“And I’m glad we’ve got running water, and especially hot water,” Lestrade added, “because I want a proper bath. He’s still out? Good.” It wouldn’t do to express a wish for something like a big hot bath in Sherlock’s hearing. He’d probably run with it and go full Roman, installing a _caldarium_ and a whatever the word for a moist steam bath was, along with the hot bath. As long as the genius inventor stayed away from setting up a _frigidarium_ , and testing it by pushing Lestrade into its freezing depths, Lestrade was content.

Up on his floor, he pulled a face at the cubicle with its shower of hot water, but was glad enough to use it, and the cans of boiler water Mrs H sent up to fill his hip bath, set before the crackling fire. Bless their housekeeper for the sandwich and mulled wine too. He set his stall up, soap, flannel, oil – worth getting a…book? Nah. He had enough…fodder. He was soon lost in his fantasy, especially when he thrust a finger into the tiny cut-glass dish of comfiture he’d helped himself to, and sucked that into his mouth. After his thought of earlier, he could just imagine… In no time at all he was treating himself to tight, short strokes, rubbing the foreskin down over the glans but not the crown. Not yet. This was going to be slow and long, a moment seized out of time, a stolen moment in which everything was let go, including all the soreness and strain from his muscles.

With a deep sigh, he rested his head back on the folded towel forming a pillow and sucked the last taste of the apricot sweetness from his finger. He closed his eyes and let fantasy reign. In his mind, his tongue was coated with the sticky-sweetness of the apricot preserve he’d dripped onto then licked clean of Sherlock, making that long body stretched out and tied underneath him squirm as he’d tongued and nibbled. Oh, but he wasn’t heartless. When he’d finished, and Sherlock was almost sobbing with unsatisfied need, Lestrade untied him for him to join Lestrade in the bath.

Fine, it would have to be a bigger, Roman-style bath, the sort he’d been envisioning earlier. A phantom body, long and slim and aching with unfulfilled desire plastered itself to his back and a thick, throbbing cock pressed into him from behind, trying to tempt him, to persuade…to seduce. He felt the whisper of desperate sighs on his neck and the damp tangle of curls brushing his ear seconds before small white teeth nipped at his earlobe, stretching it, and a snub nose pushed into his ear. He shivered, more so when the tip of Sherlock’s tongue sipped droplets of water from the shell of Lestrade’s ear.

God. He groaned, sloshing a hand through the water to cup his aching balls. He squeezed, pulling them away from his body slightly to stop himself coming too soon. He had to take a deep breath to force himself to go slowly. The water made him slippery, made it feel different when he pulled his hand up his cock, keeping his touch light. He pressed down on the sensitive tip, just a little, just for a second, long enough to swirl a thumb over the precum and spread it over the exposed head. Christ – his moan was louder now, especially when fantasy-Sherlock’s hand reached around from behind and took over, stroking him tighter and harder than Lestrade was prepared for, although he pushed into the rough grip.

Pushed back too, against Sherlock’s other hand at Lestrade’s arse, one long finger stroking up Lestrade’s cleft to rub and press, to pierce, to ready him for the hard cock just there, waiting… Sherlock’s body, ready, insistent, nudged him over to the low side of the bath and Lestrade bent gladly over, his torso and arms free of the water and lying at right angles to it. He was in position, poised for Sherlock to insinuate his long, slender legs between Lestrade’s and widen Lestrade’s stance. It pulled his arsecheeks apart, although not enough for Sherlock, who used hard, ruthless thumbs to press Lestrade’s cheeks open farther, baring the willing hole to his gaze.

The _slip-slap_ noise of the water made by his hand moving faster up and down his cock almost startled Lestrade. The _slish-slosh_ waves became Sherlock shifting position, and, daringly, Lestrade made fantasy-Sherlock’s breath ghost over the skin of his lower back, then his hole as Sherlock blew softly. Sherlock’s next move was to lick, his tongue warmer than the temperature of the water and both delicate and raspy together. And as Lestrade moaned, long and loud and breathed his lover’s name, Sherlock teased an oil-slick finger around the ring, then slid it in.

“I can’t wait,” whispered Sherlock right in Lestrade’s ear, a confession and an apology as he surged forwards and in, forcing himself into the tightness of Lestrade’s body, his rhythm matching that of Lestrade’s moans and gasps. Lestrade, in his tub, was sweating now, his grip on his cock punishing and his balls painful against his body.

“You’re mine,” was jerked into his ear, the words edging out between Sherlock’s clenched teeth. “Aren’t you. Say it. Say you’re mine.” One of the hardest-fought, hardest-won climaxes of Lestrade’s life was looming, threatening. He shuddered. “You’re mine,” Sherlock insisted, his voice firmer. “Say –”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lestrade.”

_What? What the f–_

“You’ve used all the hot water and I wanted a bath.” The peeved tones were Sherlock’s, and Lestrade, his fist still gripping his swollen, aching cock, opened his eyes. It _was_ Sherlock, a…towel-wearing Sherlock, standing next to the tub, looking as miffed as he sounded. “Can’t you finish your bout of onanism somewhere else? And quickly, before you foul the water.”

“ _Sherlock!_ ” The name exploded in a scream.

“Yes? Oh, you’ve been crying my name for a fair few minutes, you know.”

And that was it, that sentence, delivered with that smirk, that was the thing that tipped the balance. Lestrade went from embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated, to enraged. A blood-tide of anger swept over him, engulfed him in a blood-red mist and lifted him from the bath in one overwhelming tidal wave, his body dripping and his prick still throbbing.

“Is that _fast_ enough for you?” he asked, his voice catching on the adjective, his tone hard and heavy, and Sherlock took a step backwards at the cold threat in it. “ _Fast_ enough for your highness?” Lestrade continued, moving forwards, slow and deadly, and Sherlock stumbled, tangling himself in his towel. Lestrade barely had to stretch out his leg and stamp down a foot to stand on the white towelling and enjoy the flailing and clumsy coltishness of Sherlock’s legs revealed by the unpeeling fabric. Not only his legs. Lestrade caught a glimpse of flesh not as pale as the rest – Sherlock’s prick was engorged with blood, hard and upstanding.

“You were watching.” His voice rang louder now, echoing in his chamber. As Sherlock toppled to his back, his hands breaking his fall, Lestrade indicated the tub, now tenantless. “You were watching and listening. Like what you saw, what you heard?” And in a white-hot, red-mist flash he was on Sherlock, pinning the slimmer, lither body under his own.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

Sherlock struggled but, easy prey with his feet imprisoned in the swath of towelling, only succeeded in turning himself over onto his hands and knees, one slender foot knocking into the bottle of oil left near the bath. It was unstopped and started to spill, but Lestrade caught it before it voided, making one hand slippery in the process. He was still able to give a hard pull to the captive, though, jerking him backwards, rendering him from cat on all fours poised to flee to bowed-headed subservient, long legs bent underneath him. Thoughtful of him to retain the towel: Lestrade knelt on it between Sherlock’s spread thighs, forcing his forehead to remain on the floor…and his arse to raise up.

“I _do_ wish you’d let me up,” came from his prisoner. The words were breezy, but Lestrade heard a slight quaver to Sherlock’s voice and saw the fine tremor along the long muscles of Sherlock’s back.

“Oh do you.” If asked to recount his words later, he’d have no idea what he said. “Do you really.” Perhaps it was the quivers, barely perceptible but there, in the flesh he held restrained, that accounted for what transpired next, Lestrade raising a hand to bring it down hard and true on one perfect half-globe. The ringing _thwack_ came marginally after, as Lestrade watched the white handprint fill, watched the pale moon blush for its sins. For _his_. He held his breath as Sherlock stilled as if turned to stone, then let it out when Sherlock began to struggle. Lestrade wasn’t having that. He subdued the body, subdued Sherlock, watched the quivers of that toned-muscle flesh turn into goose bumps, and delivered a second spank to the other half of that oh-so-tempting rump presenting itself.

Sherlock was speaking now, cursing, and Lestrade was excruciatingly hard, pre-cum leaking from him, and without thinking swiped his oily hand up and down his shaft, then moved to slick Sherlock’s puckered pink hole, exposed to his touch. It shrank from his finger, closing tight. He was usually tight, the few times Lestrade had taken him there. Too busy to get himself serviced, no doubt. Or, no, couldn’t find anyone good enough for him. Yeah. Not that Lestrade cared. Not when it meant he could sink himself into that tight heat, feeling it stretch around him as it did for no one else, intimate, intense. He could feel the constriction now, and not just around the finger he was preparing Sherlock with.

No; he was still lost in his fantasy, a willing traveller in his self-conjured dream realm, seeing himself pressing the head of his cock to Sherlock’s anus, feeling the hole tense, resist, try to repel the invasion, then soften and bloom around it, as a now-humble Sherlock went limp under him. Lestrade loved that. Adored the toughness and muscle he had to open up, to conquer, in order to tryst. Couldn’t see himself with some woman, all silky and wet for him, not when this glory was there for him to make his. He’d start slowly, of course, until his strokes had loosened Sherlock enough for him to forge deep and strong, to hammer home, to make Sherlock take every inch of his shaft. And it was his rules.

“Don’t you dare come until I say. Don’t –”

Don’t look at me, he should have said. Because he glanced down the length of Sherlock’s contorted body and saw his face, turned to one side, his pink mouth slack, panting, expectant, and his moon-silver eyes fixed on Lestrade.

“You want this. You want to be taken in the arse and –”

 _You’re happy to oblige._ Sherlock hadn’t spoken but Lestrade heard the words delivered in that crisply superior tone nonetheless. Spelling it out, laying it out, the, not rules, but lines, perhaps, of their…whatever it was. Their Sherlock-led, Lestrade following, lagging back a few steps, but his puppet, thing. And it wasn’t…enough. But damn him to hell and back, Lestrade couldn’t resist the sight before him, that perfect, willing, wanting, waiting arse, empty of him… And that’s how it would stay.

He lifted his hand and rained down two more punishing, stinging blows on Sherlock’s buttocks, and that, the red and pink sullying that lily white, well, that and a few pulls on his tumescent cock were all it took to bring him off. And then the arsecheeks were sullied more, stained and dirtied, and Sherlock was silent, as well he might be, with this change in the steps of their dance, at Lestrade’s no longer blindly following Sherlock’s tune.

 _Plays me like his bastard violin._ The thought beat at Lestrade and in silence he dunked the towel in the bath water and cleaned himself and Sherlock up, his touch trembling when he touched himself, tender on Sherlock. He dried them both, then sank in on himself. “Go,” he ordered, his voice hoarse. “Just…go.” He curled in, didn’t see, didn’t watch, didn’t listen to the movements he heard but knew of course they were Sherlock leaving, quitting as he’d been ordered.

And yet, when had he ever obeyed a single command? Lestrade got to his feet and staggered over to his bed. It was occupied. Sherlock. On display. On exhibition. Sprawled on the cover, one leg bent at the knee, his long, clever toes curled into the mattress. One hand was stroking up and down his erect cock, and the other palming his balls. Lestrade watched, the one turned to stone. Sherlock’s head was thrown back, the tendons in his neck roped, and, as if sensing Lestrade’s presence, he opened his eyes to stare straight at him.

“ _Sherlock._ ”

Lestrade had no idea what he was going to say. To protest? To rail? He didn’t even know that. But Sherlock jolted him to his very soul with his next word. And it was just one word, breathed in the heaviness of the night.

“ _Please._ ”

It whispered around the room, around them.

“I…will,” Lestrade husked. Because he always did. Just as Sherlock did him. The room was strong with twilight, or moonlight or could even have been from the bag of moonshine gaslighting affair Sherlock was testing in the small courtyard at the back. Whatever light or shine, it gave the entire moment an even thicker dreamlike quality. Neither spoke as Lestrade knelt on the bed, as carefully as if he were approaching a wild forest creature, and waited a heartbeat or two before crawling up slowly. Still without a word he ran a hand down Sherlock’s left leg, wincing as his calloused palm slid down the much smoother skin in his hand. His sturdy fingers formed a band around the deceptively delicate ankle as he lifted the leg over his shoulder.

Sherlock was wordless too, his eyes much more silver than any moonlight, watching Lestrade skim his hand back up the raised limb. Perhaps he shifted or maybe Lestrade moved him, but as Lestrade traced a path up Sherlock’s thigh, the space between Sherlock’s legs was wider for Lestrade to fit into. And yet it was intimate, almost like being in a thwaite, as the sight, the feel, the _scent_ of Sherlock surrounded him. Lestrade suddenly recalled his mistake of earlier, his looking Sherlock in the eyes and bringing everything crashing down. It wouldn’t…be a mistake here, now, he knew, raising his head to meet those silvered eyes. Still no words passed, but Lestrade smiled, despite the curious lump settling in his chest. He lowered his head again before he could know if Sherlock would show a matching one.

He gave in to his need to touch, cupping Sherlock’s heavy sac for a long moment before teasing it with the tip of his tongue. He played, needing Sherlock to shift restlessly before going on. Sherlock stilled, though, as Lestrade licked and laved, first one side, then the other, mouthing at the fullness. they’d never…but it felt right, somehow, taking Sherlock in, feeling the weight and size stretch his jaw. Of course, before long, the little sod’s impatient wriggle said he wanted Lestrade’s mouth somewhere else. Somewhere not a million miles away.

Lestrade released the soft yet firm he held captive, but didn’t move higher. He rode the rush of power he felt from being in charge and put a hand on Sherlock’s hip to hold him still. His next move was to return to his playground, nuzzling with his nose, which made Sherlock emit an undignified squeak, before licking and blowing the wetness dry. Over and over. And over again. The strangled noise from up the bed was his name, he realised.

“Sorry, did you…?” he asked, his breath warm now as it huffed out. Another noise. Sherlock did want something. “Then ask for it.” He was all reasonableness. Sherlock was motionless. Must be killing him. “Anything you want,” Lestrade repeated, his voice husky. he looked back as his bedmate. “Just…ask.” He wished he could time the pause, the halt, the wait. Wished he could record the shifts and shuffles of those lovely-long limbs, splayed out on the bed. So wished he could capture the attempts at words, or speech.

“Suck me.” It wasn’t…an imperative. Not a command. An entreaty? And the next words shivered through Lestrade. “Suck my cock.” And the next, although he should have been inured to it from earlier, transfixed him anew. “ _Please._ ”

“Such manners. You aristocracy or something?”

But before Sherlock could smile at the reply, Lestrade bent his head and engulfed Sherlock’s cock, taking it down deep. It felt good; he knew that. Oh, it wasn’t that he was vain about his prowess. He knew intimately, heart-stoppingly, how it felt when Sherlock was kneeling in front of him pleasuring him like this, his curly head bent in that facsimile of submission, his ripe lips firm around Lestrade’s prick, his clever mouth and tongue worshipping it.

And he also knew his action was good from the way Sherlock’s ivory-fingered hands dropped down, seemingly beyond their owner’s control, to land on Lestrade’s head and thread into his hair. Oh, and the way Sherlock’s hips bucked, again without his volition, both reactions designed to enable Sherlock to force himself deeper, although he stopped himself forcing Lestrade deeper down, and thrusting deeper still.

Jaw aching, Lestrade pulled off to swirl his tongue around the head and probe lightly at the slit of Sherlock’s cock, contrasting the higher-pitched whine this produced from Sherlock with the broken groan he uttered when Lestrade sucked him back deep again. And God, if it didn’t make Lestrade stiffen again, or at least make his prick stir in the attempt to. He released his hold on Sherlock’s hip and Sherlock’s leg from his shoulder as he repositioned himself, so he could stroke himself. Just in case. God, yes. The moan he gave at the surprise sensation reverberated around Sherlock’s cock, making him thrust, then still.

“Lestrade, you’re” was all Sherlock managed, and that with ground-glass difficulty before he lost control and bucked, fucking Lestrade’s mouth. Lestrade tried to meet him thrust for thrust, sucking hard, one hand fast and tight around his cock and the other gripping Sherlock’s arsecheek just as tightly. His nails dug, then sliced into the yielding flesh, and Sherlock twitched and jerked, overcome. “I’m” he managed and tried to move back, but Lestrade wasn’t having that. He pulled him closer, working him with mouth and lips, tongue and throat, working himself to a spend in the process, so he was moaning around Sherlock’s cock as he brought him to a long, glorious, pulsing spill.

He rode Sherlock’s waves of release, almost choking as he swallowed, not least because the word emerging, albeit stuttered and attenuated, from Sherlock’s tense lips was… _Lestrade’s name_. Oh, not his workaday surname, coarsened and blunted by use, but his given name, a still-sharp, shiny secret treasure. Had he heard that, gasped out in Sherlock’s little-death throes? He…wasn’t sure, and couldn’t ask. But he was smiling as he pulled back, giving Sherlock a last, long lick. They were both breathing heavily, staying motionless for a minute, that fine-boned hand still resting on Lestrade’s head. Breathing became easier, and the crackle and _sizz_ of the fireplace flames was once again audible in the room. Lestrade straightened up – had to – slowly and even more slowly raised his head to face Sherlock.

Sherlock straightened too, as Lestrade had expected, bending forward at the waist as he regarded Lestrade. I should say…something, Lestrade thought, his thoughts scattering as he tried to harness them. Nothing he could think of would come out right, he knew. But leave it to Sherlock, of course, to do the unexpected, the startling, the… He leaned forwards, shadows playing over his body in the ill-lit room, and reached down, his strong hands seizing Lestrade and pulling him back with Sherlock as he lay flat again, forcing Lestrade to accompany him. Well, why should his behaviour in bed be any different to that he exhibited during the day?

But this was, as they faced the other, lying side by side, heads on one thick feather pillow, and especially as Sherlock’s hand reached out and pulled Lestrade in close, to take his lips in the sweetest, softest press imaginable. It was almost shy, that touch of lips, and as Lestrade deepened it into a kiss, he realised Sherlock must be able to taste himself, in the recesses of Lestrade’s mouth. When they peeled apart, Sherlock’s long lashes shuttered his gaze, and Lestrade wasn’t that surprised at him tugging and rolling Lestrade to get to turn around, facing away.

He was jolted, however, at the long arm that draped over him, wriggling its way under his elbow. He didn’t know if he should take it, hold it. It wasn’t something they – So he settled for trapping it under his arm, and pressing back into the warm body at his back, pressing back into the breath on his shoulder and then the soft lips on his neck. Oh. He didn’t –

 _He didn’t wipe me off._ Typical. Sticky, soon to be stuck with the spent and now drying cum, Lestrade submitted to the heavy leg thrown over him, tucked the tentative hand under his arm tighter, wriggled at the soft tickle of silky hair on his neck, and thrilled to the – he thought – sly darts of plump lips essaying kisses at his nape. _We…have…totalk_ , was all the thought he could form before sleep claimed him.

Not surprisingly, Sherlock haunted his dreams. Well, he consumed most of Lestrade’s waking hours; why shouldn’t Lestrade be chasing him in his nocturnal ones too? But he woke smiling into the pillow, rolling on the waves of one particularly vivid image, one especially interesting scene, ready for

 

“Another!”

“Gimmeminute,” he slobbered in response to the preemptory tone, his prick lazily filling for duty, his arm patting behind him for his bedmate.

“Another, right now!”

His questing hand met nothing, and his tumescence deflated somewhat at the triumphant ring. It drooped completely as he struggled to turn onto his back and open his eyes, only to be covered in discarded news sheets, as white as the petals which had showered down on him and Sherlock in his dreams – yeah; what the hell? – but a lot larger and weightier, in every sense.

“The _Morning Post_ ,” he observed, rubbing his fingers into his eyes and brushing aside the pages.

“Obviously.” Sherlock held one section and was tapping it. “It’s –”

“Coffee.” It came out as a beseeching moan.

“What? It doesn’t…” Sherlock scanned the print for a few seconds before catching on. “Oh. Yes. That.”

 _That_ was…a breakfast tray? At least, there was a silver salver, and a silver pot of coffee and a couple of just as silver dishes with more silver lids on ’em. Lestrade sat, inhaling the aroma. “You…brought me –”

“Another stupid society death, yes.” And the page in question, all devoted to the relevant story, was pushed under his nose. He closed his eyes, however, and swung himself out of bed, in need of coffee. “Vauxhall,” Sherlock continued, watching Lestrade, who only then recalled he was stark-bollock-naked. Oh well. Not as though Sherlock hadn’t seen him in his birthday suit before. Last night, for instance.

“The Gardens?” They said this coffee made the mental processes…quicker, wasn’t it? Didn’t seem to as he lost seconds conjuring up an image of the south bank pleasure gardens, those acres with their trees and shrubs and box hedges and alleys and arbours, their ponds and waterfalls. Oh, and their music and lights and dances and acrobats and jugglers and balloons going up and tightrope dancers coming down.

“What happened, a glass lamp fall on someone?” He’d always thought those thousands of lanterns strung together must be dangerous. “No, hang about.” His fingers tightened around his cup as he thought back to the last case he’d had there. “Something happen in one of the close walks? Those unlit bits, all groves and grottoes?” Plenty had happened, night he’d been working there for the fete to celebrate the victorious Battle of –

“In a supper box.” An impatient Sherlock tried to slot the newspaper into Lestrade’s hand, but was hampered by the flaky pastry Lestrade had taken to break his fast with. With a huge _tutt_ Sherlock bent and removed the pastry with his mouth, eating it himself as the quickest way to empty Lestrade’s hand for the newspaper.

“Charming,” muttered Lestrade, watching Sherlock swallow and a few pastry crumbs decorate his deep blue silk banyan. He peeped a little lower – as he’d thought, a sly flash of white linen indicated Sherlock was wearing those loose knee-length underdrawers he was fond of. Well, Lestrade was fonder of them, probably. In fact –

“He caught alight and fell or jumped, as the flames consumed him.”

“Jesus!” A chastened Lestrade read the details. “A spark from a firework set fire to spilled arack punch and he startled and fell into the flame?”

“Landed right in the orchestra, when he jumped. Or fell,” Sherlock commented. “Or…was pushed.” That last was murmured, and Lestrade wasn’t sure he’d caught it.

“Damn,” he exclaimed, throwing the remains of his coffee down his throat and looking around for his clothes. “This will give all those Bible-bashers another excuse to go tub-thumping and drumming up support to try and close the pleasure gardens once and for all.”

“I wasn’t aware you felt so strongly about them,” Sherlock commented.

“I don’t give a toss. Just any form of protest, on the streets of London, is a worry. And a lot of work,” Lestrade admitted. “Don’t want an excuse to call out the sodding militia, do we.” He saw Sherlock was still watching him, as he finished dressing. Something in his gaze made Lestrade say, “Look. About last night. Well, about things in general.”

“I… Yes. It was a success,” Sherlock replied, half turning away.

“What.”

“The…demulcent.”

Lestrade bit back the second _what_ rising to his lips. Stared instead, narrow-eyed.

“Yes, the cerate. A little admixture I’d been working on and mixed into a bath soap.”

“Oh you did, did you.” Lestrade’s tone was heavy.

“As I needed to use a pharmacologically inert, adhesive substance, lanolin in this case, to bind the contents of the unction, I simply made it into a soap.”

“And what commixture would that have been, eh.” It was heavier now as he circled Sherlock.

“A…stimulant. An…amative.”

“A _wampole_? You dosed me with an _aphrodisiac_? Are you…” Lestrade took a deep breath, tried to unclench his fists. “You were _experimenting_ with my things?”

“Mine, actually. Well, ours. Things do seem to become communal, don’t they.” Sherlock straightened and brushed down his gown. “Oh, and could you document your reactions, both at the time and now? I’d like to note any side effects, you see.”

“If,” Lestrade said slowly, “I had time, I’d willingly help you in your experiments with chemicals and unguents and whatnot, God, would I, by anointing you with Oil of Gladness.” He waited a hot, pulsating beat but it seemed Mr Clever, Mr Speaks All the Cant, didn’t know that one. “It means I’d gladly punch your arrogant, experimenting lights out.” He laced his voice with as much menace as it would hold.

“Oh.” Sherlock blinked rapidly and swallowed. “Later, then, perhaps.”

“Count on it,” Lestrade threw over his shoulder as he left. As exit lines went, it was weak, but heartfelt.

 

 

Sherlock finished the coffee and slipped down to his rooms, and into his bed to reread the article and think, comparing this latest death, out on the south bank, with the original case at White’s, in St James’s, and the death at the Westminster Pit, oh, and the duel out on Putney Heath. There was a pattern, if he could but grasp it. He superimposed the incidents on a mental map of London, correlating that with their dates, surprised and annoyed when thoughts of Lestrade broke through and overlaid themselves. He shook his head and screwed his eyes tighter. There was a pattern, a connection, he knew. If only he could dismiss all interfering, unwarranted images of a certain –

“Yoo-hoo!”

The tone was not her usual sprightly one, nor was it the more tentative one she used to check if he’d wake. It was a muted version of the first, called from the half-open door as if to hail him, but lowered in deference to his possible sleeping state, which was then negated by the sharp rap on the door. Interesting. Mrs Hudson had something…out of the ordinary and fairly urgent to tell him. He caught twice-louder than it should be shuffling from the corridor and was half expecting Mrs Hudson’s stage-whispered, “You go right on in, dear. He’ll be pleased to see you. Go on, love.”

“Mrs Hudson!” Sherlock called. “Are you adding pander to your list of talents now?”

She snorted, her head appearing round the open door. “If I were, she wouldn’t get much change out of you, would she! Go on in. That’s it.” She all but shoved the young woman, a tiny thing, all huge eyes and trembling lips and long dark hair, inside the chamber. “Sherlock, don’t you recognise her?”

“Should I?” There was something not too unfamiliar about the hunched shoulders, the wringing hands.

“It’s Molly. Molly! Housemaid from The Myth! Oh, Sherlock! You remember!”

He scowled. He didn’t like to think of the manor house.

“I remember you, sir. I was there when you came home from university.” He could barely hear the girl’s tremulous squeak and scowled harder, remembering a little saucer-eyed mouse creeping about, trying to be invisible and not show she was in love with him. Well, the idea of him.

He picked up an empty, stained coffee cup and waggled it, but Mrs Hudson didn’t seem to get the hint. “And…” He yawned as questioned Molly.

“And this.” She pulled the _Morning Advertiser_ from inside her coat. It was folded to a small rectangle. A report of a death . He stared at her. “Yes, sir. I can read.” She blushed. “But this…it’s not right, sir. He wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t”

“Wait, girl.” He took the paper to silence her and because her trembling hand was annoying him. “Mrs H, I’m presuming this Milly”

“Molly.” Her brown eyes flashed.

“Molly is one of your collection of causes. Your works.”

“I found Molly the job with the earl, yes,” his housekeeper replied.

“I’ve been with him for five years,” Molly threw in, wiping a tear from her eye.

Loyal but not transferred her affections. He rolled his eyes, and by chance caught a glimpse of the newspaper story, the spur to Molly’s visit. Oh. “Molly.” He deepened his voice and rolled out the syllables and watched her mouth drop open as she fought for breath. He patted the space beside him as he sat. “Why don’t you sit and tell me all about Earl Polstead, who met his demise at Vauxhall, unfortunately immolated, hmm? Do come along.” A grab at her hand had her sitting. “And Mrs Hudson, coffee, please. for two. Oh, and something for Molly…to nibble.” She was rolling her eyes as she left, calling that she was leaving the door open, you never knew, it wouldn’t do, people talked and…

Molly had a good idea to say, not all of it germane, but questioning her got to the bones of the story: landed gentry whose lands weren’t quite so…landed, casting around for a wealthy wife to bolster up the estate, hooking someone with moderate estates of her own, but land located on the wrong side of the Indian ocean…

“A chicken nabob.” Sherlock nodded. Her father’s fortune, made in the East Indian plantations, was greater than a Cit’s, less grubby than a Northern manufacturer’s, and more respectable still now his daughter was a countess. “And increasing? How many months along? Oh stop being so missish!”

“I _am_ a miss. Sir.” Something in her tone stopped him.

“Was she present at the revels?” he enquired.

“No, sir. She was indisposed. She had me sit with her all evening. All night. Well, a few of us. And the doctor. She had a feeling…”

“I…see. And her father?”

“We sent for him and the message overtook him and he came back. He was supposed to be there, in that box…” She bent her head down, and Sherlock folded a handkerchief into her restless hand.

“But the earl…”

“He…wanted to get out, if you take my meaning. He’s been out of the house a lot lately.”

“Since the marriage,” clarified Mrs H, clattering in with the tray. “Not just to get a bit of peace, but to try and liven up, try new things, what with her being younger than him, saying he was old and dull and such.”

“She pushed him into it!” Molly burst out, then flushed a startling coquelicot at her words.

“Well, you can’t convict someone for delivering curtain lectures, more’s the pity,” lamented Sherlock, eliciting an illustrative, nagging, “Sherlock!” from his bustling housekeeper. “Nor for excessive, unnecessary tidying,” he added.

“Please, sir,” Molly began.

“Sherlock,” Sherlock and Mrs Hudson said together. He side-eyed her.

“Sh-Sherlock.” Molly almost choked. “Something’s wrong, I know it.”

“Hmm.” The little mousy girl had caught his attention. “Leave it with me. I’ll look into it.” Mrs H rubbed Molly’s shoulders in joy. “Molly, have you time to write an account, all you recall about the marriage, this recent change in the earl, until last night? I see from the state of your hands you enjoy keeping a journal. You note down your observations.”

“I…read and write,” she admitted.

“Who taught you?”

She let out a choked snort. “The same person who taught you. Your mother.”

He frowned. All these women and their interfering ways. He was surrounded by them. “Go to my laboratory, Molly. Billy will show you. There are writing materials there. And do feel free to poke around. Being a woman.” The last was muttered as Mrs Hudson shouted for Billy and dispatched Molly and hurriedly filled John in on what was occurring as he appeared.

“That was nice of you.” Mrs Hudson patted him approvingly as she made the bed around him. “You’ll help her?”

“ _Cherchez la femme_ ,” John said, for some reason as he came in, still looking over his shoulder in Molly’s direction.

“John! We shall need the papers,” Sherlock decreed.

“All of them?” John blinked.

“Yes. Well, we have the _Morning Post_ and the _Morning Advertiser_. We’ll need the _Morning Chronicle_ , And the _English Chronicle_ , the _Commercial Chronicle_ and the _St. James’s Chronicle_.” Sherlock took a breath and prepared to start on the _D_ s.

“All right, all right!” John caught the purse Sherlock threw over and went to do his bidding.

“John!” Sherlock yelled, throwing up the window. He smiled at the comical look on John’s face as he span around and looked up. “Get as many recent back issues as you can too! Here!” Even more comical was the look on John’s face and the twist of his body as he leapt to catch the second purse Sherlock lobbed. Sherlock watched him dash over to a cab, on his way to the Strand and Catherine Street newspaper offices.

And horrified was the look on Mrs Hudson’s face scant hours later at the sight of the living room, briefly seen before she clapped a trembling hand over her mouth, her eyes huge as they took in the discarded news sheets lying like snowdrifts, the clipped out articles pinned to the wall, their dates and places written above them in bold black letters. John jumped up to take the tray from her slack hands.

“Here.” Sherlock thrust a small pile of pages into Mrs H’s empty hands before she would wring them. “You like him.”

“Oooh, Langdale Pike! He knows everything that’s going on in society. He writes for magazines as well, you know.” Mrs Hudson informed them, smoothing out the top page.

“And the best garbage papers, I see,” said John. “Oh, no offence.”

“He spends all his waking hours in the bow window of a St. James’s Street club,” Mrs H continued, her voice lowered.

“Really?” John asked, looking at the columns in the many different publications.

“No one knows what he looks like! And they say he’s really one of the _ton_ , writing under a pen name!” Mrs H whispered.

Sherlock stared hard at her. “Now, cease your prattling and get to work. Not the dusting! Drop that cloth this second. Look at this.” He led her to the line of incidents, the recent spate of strange deaths. “What connects these?”

“Well, they’re all…fashionable,” came her surprising comment, a few minutes later, after scanning the lines underlined in red ink in the stories. “You know, things of the times. And seem to do with the strange mood nowadays. The atmosphere… It’s making people do funny things ”

“Huh. Hard to investigate a mood, an atmosphere,” John commented, his notebook nevertheless at the ready.

“Not…necessarily. People behaving strangely, out of character, things being different…it’s part of the background information. What you might call gossip,” Sherlock replied, his eyes still on the housekeeper. “I presume your network is up to date? You keep a list?”

“Yes. And yes. Up here.” Mrs Hudson nodded, tapping her temple. “I remember. I’ve got a hip, not hot water on the brain.”

“Then call on the section heads, request them to ask their people and report back to you. Then get back to me,” ordered Sherlock.

“What? You want belowstairs’ _tittle_?” John exclaimed.

“I want all the news that’s not fit to print.” Sherlock struck a pile of newspaper. “From Billingsgate, Smithfield, Covent Garden, and yes, from jarveys, abigails, John coachmen, running footmen, underfootmen, parlour maids, tweeny maids, scullery maids, valets and…housekeepers.”

“Give me three days,” promised Mrs H, bustling away. John closed his mouth.

“That’s all very well,” Sherlock mused, pacing, “but for what’s laughably called the higher echelons we need someone more at home in milliners, modistes, mantua makers. A habituée of parlours and print shops, of smart salons and stylish squares, au fait with the on-dits. And someone to whom the male members of the ton tell… _everything_.” He closed a book with a bang on the last word, making John jump. “John?”

“Yes?” answered the loyal but confused doctor.

“I need you,” came the reply, and still protesting he wasn’t a nick-ninny but he didn’t quite twig, John was swept away.


	6. Chapter Six

“Sherrrlockkk.” Only one person made his name into a purr like that. Only one person he let get away with it. He raised an eyebrow at the peep of dark eye, winged brow and tumbling lock of ebony hair and glimpse of white shoulder carefully deployed around the japanned dressing screen. “What a lovely surprise visit. But I would have come to you, you know. Oh, I suppose it’s so urgent that you can’t wait even the few minutes it would take me to dress. Oh well. You’ll have to take me _en déshabillé_. Needs must, one supposes…”

She slid from behind the screen and twined herself voluptuously around one corner of it so the black silk peignoir fell open, revealing the slim white legs that were the toast of London.

“I’m surprised not to find you…occupied,” said Sherlock, his tone bland so it was hard to tell if the more libidinous meaning of ‘occupying a woman’ was meant. “And yes, I don’t have enough time for you to make yourself decent. No one does,” he added, under his breath. He fingered the day-dress abandoned over a chair, letting the costly material slide through his fingers, maintaining eye contact with The Woman as he did so. She narrowed her eyes but refused to blush. Oh, not at a man handling her garments, but at Sherlock finding the hastily discarded dress still warm to the touch.

She stalked out fully from her vantage point and looked around the room.

“He isn’t here,” said Sherlock, amused. She’d heard two sets of footsteps ascending to her chamber.

“What? I don’t follow.” Her negligee slipped from one shoulder as she shrugged, exposing more creamy skin, this rounded, and crested with a dusky pink peak.

“And you can’t make him jealous by flirting with me, you know,” Sherlock added.

She stared hard at him for a few beats before snapping, “What the hell do you want this time?” in a tone that wasn’t so drawling or husky but sharper, tighter. Commoner. She threw herself into the chair before her mirrored dressing table and jabbed a hairpin into the errant black lock, then inspected her face, turning from one side to the other, frowning and rubbing at the lines around her mouth before rummaging in her drawer for her cigarette box anyway.

“That’s better,” said Sherlock. He crossed to look out onto Bedford Square, that elegant garden square in Bloomsbury, known for its distinguished residents and modern, prize-winning architecture. He was well aware there was a notorious street not far off the square where a number of men had set up their mistresses: it was quite the norm, indeed, had become quite the fashion, to see gentlemen coming and going there. Typical of The Woman, however, to demand this townhouse in the heart of the _ton_ as part of the contract with whomever had the keeping of her at present. Or maybe she even owned the house herself. Hmm. A theatrical yet feminine cough had him spinning around.

“Ah. Of course. Do forgive me, Irene. This dumbstruck man at the door, too awed by your presence to enter bodily yet staring hard enough to be able to describe the room later , is one Dr John Watson.”

“Dr John Watson.” Irene sprang up and beckoned John in. She frowned, just a little, and pouted as he inched forwards. “Ah. I have it. Oh no, can’t jot words.”

“I, I beg your…” John wilted at the red-tipped fingernail pointed at him.

“Dr John Watson. Oh no, can’t jot words.” She made a twinkling gesture with the fingers of one hand, set them fluttering. “Just as we have here Sherlock Holmes, private detective. Top crime solver. He tackled thieves.”

“La Adler enjoys playing with names, John. And after being told the Ardent Agent wasn’t a good enough descriptive moniker, she turned to naming-anagrams,” Sherlock threw in.

“How very clever!” John’s face glowed. “You should take up writing your own plays, madam.”

“Irene. Or you could write one for me,” she capped, running a finger across John’s hand and halting her progress on the callouses left by pens and flicking a nail over ink spots.

“I, I…” John tried again.

“I need your help,” Sherlock cut in. “With Lestrade’s investigation. Sort of.”

“Inspector Lestrade coming to me for assistance! Well well,” Irene breathed.

“Quite. He needs a special touch only you can provide.” Sherlock was shameless. “And obviously you’d report to me at Baker Street, whenever’s convenient to you. Breakfast, say, or supper. Or if that’s not agreeable, at Bow Street. A private interview.”

“You’d better explain.” Irene, all business, rang for her maid. “Oh, and I suppose I owe you thanks for finding me Anna,” she said to Sherlock. She loosed a would-be bewitching smile what was quite lost on him. “It’s such a boon to have a maid who can’t be questioned by jealous suitors. You can’t imagine… And oh, this makes the second favour I’ll have done for the lovely Lestrade! I wonder how grateful he’ll be this time. He can’t seem to keep away from me, can he, for all his much-vaunted moral uprightness and propriety.”

Her gaze whipped to her top dressing table drawer, leading Sherlock to suppose that was where she kept the somewhat effusive thank-you letter from Lestrade that…Sherlock had forged. He had absolutely no shame.

“Maybe I’ll be calling in these favours one of these days,” Irene mused.

“And maybe he’ll call your bluff, like last time,” Sherlock warned.

“And maybe I’d like that,” riposted Irene. “Like last time. I do like…a firm hand. So few men seem to have one, these days. Have you noticed that?” The look she threw him reminded him not to underestimate her, not her intelligence, or her instinctive understanding, or her capacity for strategising and scheming. He wouldn’t. John looked from him to Irene as if he were following a game of Badminton Battledore. It promised to be a long morning.

 

“Let me see if I understand.” Irene put her cup down on its saucer with the _tink_ that denoted good bone china. “You want me to report who’s sneaking about behind who’s back?”

“Be more imaginative. Think.” Sherlock frowned. “Reports of crim. con I can get from multi-volume collections of court records embellished for the scandal-hungry, such as _Trials for Adultery_ , or _The Cuckold’s Chronicle_.” He held up a finger to stop her interrupting. “Just as I can get accounts of sensational crimes, tricked up for the masses, from anthologies of trial reports, like the _Old Bailey Sessions Papers_ or the _Newgate Calendar_.”

“Oooh, saucy!” chided Irene.

“Hypocritical, more like.” Sherlock yawned. “Salacious scenes of sexual deviance painstakingly rendered in words and images, yet prefaced by moral lectures from clergymen, purporting to be teaching by example. Erotic titillation _and_ moral inculcation.”

“Nothing beats the real thing, anyway,” Irene said.

“Those books you mention…” John ran his finger under his cravat. “Would they be, erm, readily available?”

“So you want society gossip, then,” Irene said, after a pause. “Well, Lord knows I hear plenty of that. Do you want it from the upper ten thousand or the mushrooms?”

Sherlock thought of the range of deaths so far. They’d involved both the old and new moneyed. “Both tribes,” he ordered, adding under his breath, ‘“Society is now one polish’d horde, Form’d of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.”’

“Well, you know about the Cromers, I presume. Oh, not just the emeralds,” Irene said, distracted as she held a dress against herself, looking into the mirror.

“About the duchess and her, erm, _Rosenkavalier_? Yes, we know all about that, thanks,” said John.

“Her _Rose_ … No; not her and her fluffy little man-cub: the duke and his footman! Although, I’m guessing the young retainer is concerned with serving _quite_ _another_ part of his master’s anatomy.” The Woman’s voice dropped into the low, musical cadence that had audiences leaning forward to hang on to every word.

“It’s more than actual gossip we need,” said John. “It’s…feelings. Moods, really.” He shrugged.

“Excuse me while I dress.” Irene vanished behind her screen. “It’s time for me to take the air in the park. See what’s on offer.”

“It’s the war, really,” John tried to explain. “It’s stirred up a lot.”

Sherlock thought he understood what John meant. The savage attacks on authority figures, in prints, in print and in song – the animosity expended towards those who remained at home and lived well while others travelled far and died in vain: that was undeniable. And another strand, more discussed than observed, he felt, the enveloping miasma of futility and despair, giving rise to all those clichés… What had Anderson spouted, something about the neck-or-nothing , the hell-for-leather climate?

“Rumours,” John tried.

“The wars? Rumours?” asked Irene, rejoining them. “Oh yes. The rumours of that new club. Something quite macabre and occult. Even more so than all the morbid séances, all that trying to contact dearly beloved departed.” She shivered. “As if wearing black isn’t enough.”

“Club?” Sherlock prompted.

“Oh, some new _Club d’Morte_.” She waggled her fingers. “I’ve heard the name. I supposed it was some similar ghoulish thing to those French society dances, the Victims’ Balls.”

“ _Bals des victims_ ,” Sherlock murmured, the shadows of the past thickening around him.

“Like survivors’ parties, I think they were? You attended if you’d lost relatives to the Terror.”

“ I remember!” John broke in. “They were all the rage. Didn’t people have to dress in _costume à la victime_? Like red ribbons round their necks?

Sherlock looked away. He’d been young. Impressionable. He…still wore his top buttonhole embroidered with red stitching in memory. He still…tended not greet people with a graceful bow or bob of the head but to jerk his head sharply downwards in imitation of the moment when… Well. Youth was folly.

Irene turned around and indicated John should do up her buttons. He complied, fumbling and breathing heavily. She span back. “Will I do?”

“Do?” The question had been addressed to Sherlock, and he answered.

“To drop in at Bow Street. It’s only polite to inform the Argent Agent I’d be pleased to assist him.”

“Oh yes. Fine.” Sherlock waved a hand. Lestrade would be out all day, at the scene and at the deceased’s. Irene kindly took them home in her carriage, on her way. Getting out, John heaved a huge sigh, then stared after the departing vehicle. “Sublime,” escaped his lips, him seemingly unaware of it.

“Ah. Thank you, Wiggins, isn’t it?” Sherlock took the scrawled sheet of paper from the scruffy youth who sprang up from the steps of 221. They both had to move aside, however, as Mrs Turner and all her servants and lodgers trotted past them and into the house. “Ah. My guest has arrived. I see Mrs H is taking her usual precautions, activing her barricade. From the sublime to…Thames slime. ”

“I don’t quite follow, I’m afraid,” John replied as they entered, Sherlock reading his missive. John started to take off his outer coat but it got no farther than his elbows before Sherlock was pulling it back on him again. “The devil?” emerged from John’s lips.

“No, off you go again, John. More investigation is called for.” Sherlock patted his note.

“Oh, the Death Club?”

“Not quite. Although there was a death. At Tattersall’s. You’re not a subscriber, per chance?”

“The Tattersall’s? The Repository?” John’s eyes were wide as he shook his head. Not likely he’d be, really, of that horse-sale yard at Hyde Park Corner so beloved of the Bloods. He wasn’t likely to be found at bloodstock sales, even if most of the habitués were only there to look at the horseflesh and hounds and carriages on offer, to stroll around the stables and courtyard and discuss the merits and defects of the thoroughbreds. John was unlikely to pay a guinea a year for the dubious pleasure of frequenting the subscription room to place bets on forthcoming races or sporting events. “Wait. Today’s Monday…”

“Settling up day,” Sherlock finished for him. “Black Monday,” they said together. “For the losers,” John gulped. “Did someone…”

“Lost more than his shirt. And after, distraught, heedless, half-bosky, walked along the covered alley to compose himself and somehow, somehow, entered stable number thirteen. The notorious Unrideable Stallion,” Sherlock explained. John wasn’t up on all the details of the beautiful world. “It’s some hepped-up beast they trot around the courtyard that bucks off every stable lad or brainless wonder of the _ton_ who tries to mount it.”

“God above. He didn’t?”

“No one knows. Seems he walked right in and up to the brute and it kicked out at him. Repeatedly.”

John winced.

“But I’m putting my best man on it. So off you, erm, trot.”

“Ooh.” John was coming around more and more to the idea of a Silver Fork novel, Sherlock could see.

“Wait. Take this stick.” Sherlock handed it over.

“Sherlock! My leg… Oh.”

Of course his leg wasn’t paining him. Just, the brass-topped staff, the _de facto_ badge of public order officers, would help get John in to that exclusive circle. Luckily Sherlock kept a few spares deployed about the place, usually concealed deep in umbrella stands or tall plant stands, away from Lestrade’s sharp brown eyes. “See what you can gather,” Sherlock ordered, sweeping upstairs to the cordon of guards Mrs Hudson put in place whenever Shinwell Johnson came a’calling. Indeed, the man was standing in the living room, ringed by Mrs Hudson’s home defence league. Oh dear Lord, she’d even made him take his coat and waistcoat off and turn out his unmentionables’ pockets. Sherlock hoped she wouldn’t start insisting on a well, _closer_ search of Shinwell’s person upon his departure.

“Sherlo’, me ole china,” came the irreverent greeting from the short wiry-haired man, following by a wink which twisted his battered, leathered features. He gave a wicked-looking leer. “Ages since vi’ve seen you abawt on the frogntoad!”

Mrs Turner was covering her son’s ears against the linguistic butchery, and Shinwell reacted with a dirty-sounding cackling laugh.

“You may drop the cryptolect,” Sherlock informed his visitor.

Johnson reacted with a, “Do what, guv?”

“There’s no need for the dialect. Well, argot,” Sherlock explained. “I’m not taking notes today.” When he’d come to the capital, “ver big smoke,” as Johnson might have put it, Sherlock had made a study of the range of accents found therein, cataloguing and practicing their linguistic features until he could reproduce them all. “It isn’t as if you were a costermonger, after all.”

“Chaunter, he sounds worse than,” Mrs Hudson said. Mrs Turner nodded. “Patterer, if you ask me,” came her tuppence worth. Sherlock thought it likely Johnson had peddled sheet music of the latest ballads or ditties, or hawked cheap, tawdry goods at one time or another. He’d have needed to use thieves’ cant at some point.

“Do sit,” said Sherlock, watching his housekeeper’s lips tighten and their neighbour’s eyes widen.

“Don’t mind if I does takes a load orf.” Johnson sat. “Oh, I can’t stop long, missus. Don’t bovver putting the kettle on on my account. And if yer was finking of taking anyfink off for me, well, my missus’d ’ave sommat t’ say bawt that! Have me guts fer garters an’ all, her ’indoors would!” His filthy laugh rang out again, drowning out the feminine _oh reallys_ and _well I nevers_. “Well, maybe you should’ve, then!” came his sage advice to the mesdames, before his face turned serious. Well, as serious as it could. “Now, sirrah, you wanted the inside of the duck’s arse, beg pardoning my frog, missuses, on the Pit tragedy what ’as sadly been and gorn and occurred, thereof and therein.”

“If you’d be so kind,” Sherlock replied.

“I wan’t there, but I’ve heard it from the ’orse’s mouf. The whole place was shocked. Nuffink like that’s ever ’appened before. Geezer gorn and fell. All excited he was, puffed up like a bantam, showing off the town to his country-mouse cousins and nephews. He’d been drinking, acting the swell, was leaning over and…splat. The it’s woof woof, yum yum, tasty Cit treat.”

“You heartless cur.” If Mrs Hudson hadn’t needed to keep an eye on fixtures and fittings, she’d have left the room. She fluttered a lavender-scented handkerchief in Johnson’s general direction.

“So you enquired as to the deceased’s character and business?” Sherlock asked.

“Yus. They’s from Wales, look you. Sheep farmers, all of ’em, for generations. Only his da got ideas. A mill. Making wool. The whole shebang – cardin’, spinnin’ and threadin’. Then ’e gets bigger ideas, even if the rest thought he were orf his ned. Dyin’ the threads. Then weavin’ and warpin’ it into fine cloth. Then got hissen a cosy little shop in the City for his fancy cloth. His pricey cloth. Sellin’ to manufacturers, modistes. You name it. Now his coz and his family own it all.”

“I see.” He…didn’t. Not quite yet.

“So yus, they was there, gaping aghast.” Johnson made an agonised face, his hands outstretched, clutching. “Tried to help. They never shoved him orf. I guess maybe the country mice got jostled, in all the hugger-mugger. Got startled, maybe? They was all horrified.”

At least one person wasn’t, Sherlock thought, dismissing his man and adding scrawled notes to his papers on the wall. “Mrs Hudson!” he roared, covering his mouth and nose against the handfuls of strong powder she was throwing up high into the air. “There’s no need to fumigate after Shinwell Johnson comes here!”

“Isn’t there?” she replied grimly, puffing sweeter-smelling scents after the noxious fumes. “And me with so much to do tonight!” Sherlock buried himself in his papers and notes, only uncurling from the ball he’d folded himself into when he heard a certain tread on the stairs. He leapt to the window and stood there looking out, saying without turning around, when the footsteps halted at the door, “My dear Inspector. Placated the seething mobs? Negotiated a decent time for the gardens to close as a mark of respect? Two nights, I’ll warrant, is the mourning-period?” Now he turned, his gaze flickering over the man as he sat, assessing his day, his travails, his locations. No meeting with La Adler, Sherlock saw.

“One. One blasted day and night.” Lestrade’s brow darkened, then lightened as he pointed a finger at Sherlock. “You’re losing your touch, Viscount.”

“I was about to say the same of you.” Lestrade would have pressed for a longer, more seemly grace period, Sherlock knew. He’d also forgotten, with his breadth of workload, or forgiven, with his depth of soul, their altercation of the morning. Sherlock sat opposite, stretching and throwing his legs over the chair’s arm for Lestrade’s gaze to trace their long lines.

“And you’ve consoled the pregnant widow after her profligate husband, caught up in the frantic amusements of the age in an attempt to alternately please and evade his newly acquired and much younger wife, set himself alight while drunk and fell trying to roll on the flames?”

“Sherlock.” It came out as a sigh, on a breath of West Country sea breeze, bearing the tang of brine, the suss of waves on soft fawn sand. Sherlock tapped his fingers to the _battement_ made of this _glissando_ and the _capriccio_ of his own words that had preceded it. He had time to supply the _appoggiatura,_ thegrace notes following, beginning the _codetta_. Never the _coda_. He didn’t ever want to see that…

“Sherlock. I don’t know how you know everything but –”

“I do.”

The phrase fell heavily into the evening air. There was a weighted pause, during which neither could drop their gazes. Sherlock was glad of the bang of the street door, the rattle of a tipstaff into the umbrella stand, the footsteps on the stairs. “John. Oh, God. You’re all moon-eyed. And you reek of the stables. Tattersall’s,” he explained to Lestrade, examining John.

“Oh, you buying a team and carriage at last? A sweet little phaeton or curricle so you can twirl the ribbons?” Lestrade grinned and John giggled. Sherlock scowled.

“Hardly. No, John happened to be dropping in at the bloodstock yard, so kindly agreed to ask a few questions about the sudden, unexpected death which most sadly occurred there this afternoon. I don’t expect it’s been reported.”

John’s words tumbled over Lestrade’s exclamations, and it took a few minutes to unravel the story of the architect, a childless widow with a thriving practice and wealthy clients, whose business partner had been at Carlton House, advising Prinny himself, all afternoon, when the tragedy occurred. Oh, and said business partner was probably now to be appointed to the office of architect to the Surveyor General of the Land Revenues of the Crown in his late partner’s stead, seeing as the Prince Regent loved their work so much and…

There was a silence, broken by John’s hesitant, “I’ve been thinking, Sherlock. These deaths –”

“Murders,” Sherlock amended.

“You’ve no proof,” Lestrade threw in automatically.

“These…incidents.” John ignored the by-play. “They’re all connected to modern living, to well, _society_ , in some way. Do you think it could be someone who hates English society? An enemy of the state, with a deep hatred of us? A dangerous, crazed man? Do you see what I’m thinking?”

“You’re not – _Bonaparte?_ ” Sherlock almost yelped. “John. _Really?_ You’re becoming one of these hysterics who sees Old Boney everywhere, at the bottom of every ill? Sees him around every corner?”

“I’ve seen him closer than that,” John replied, jutting out his chin and firming his lips. “And he is a madman. A monster.”

“I –”

“I think the table looks lovely.” Lestrade cut through the deadlock, standing and indicating Mrs Hudson’s work, and that of the newest terrified, scuttling maid, in the dining area. “Hullo, Mrs Hudson. You’ve done yourself proud there. Who’s coming?”

“ _Coming?_ ” Sherlock joined him, his tone heavy.

“Um. Count the places,” Lestrade advised.

“ _Coming?_ ” Sherlock repeated, his voice louder, then cut off at the rap on the street door. “What date is it. No… Oh God.”

Mrs Hudson’s admonishing, “Sherlock!” bounced against a loud, hearty, “CUZ!” from the street.

“ _Cuz?_ Cousin?” John asked, bemused. “There’re more of you?”

“Ooh-ah.” Lestrade, the rogue, was enjoying this, Sherlock saw. “A whole _tribe_.”

“Cousin!” was shouted up again, and the rap came louder. The maid scurried down.

“That’s…Piers, isn’t it?” Lestrade said. Mrs H nodded as she busied herself with a tray and glasses.

“Bit younger than Sherlock,” she whispered. “But ever such a dresser! So fashionable!”

“I remember last visit,” recalled Lestrade, raising his voice as Sherlock groaned. Lestrade put out a hand and pulled Sherlock’s from his face for him. Yes indeed, the blackguard was enjoying his sweet revenge. “He was enamoured of the Fancy. Always prancing about in his shirtsleeves and his necktie around his collar as if he’d just finished a bout at Gentleman Jackson’s. And hanging out with all the Corinthians at the Daffy Club, and Cribb’s Parlour with all the fighters.”

“And at Limmer’s, perhaps, with all the pets of the Fancy and the pugilistic patrons, arranging the training of promising novices by boxers of renown, and organising the fixtures at the Fives Court?” John said, all in one breath.

“Oh, probably.” Lestrade narrowed his eyes in thought. “And his hairstyle! Mrs Hudson, do you remember that _à la Greque_ affair he’d teased his hair into?”

“All those dishevelled, careless waves that took hours!” She chuckled. “I think he called it the Titus.”

“Oh no. That’s short side-whiskers and cut and styled to sit up at the front. You’re describing the Brutus,” John informed her, just a little starry-eyed. “One of the most difficult styles to achieve.”

“Just out of interest, and I know I’m gonna be sorry for asking, but what’s the most difficult?” Lestrade enquired.

“The Windswept.” John’s reply was immediate. “It has to look as natural as possible with no indication of the time it took to achieve.” Both he and Mrs Hudson nodded. Lestrade rolled his eyes.

“The idiot never sticks to one thing for long,” Sherlock broke in.

“Well, maybe he’s turned into a brooding Byronic aesthete and he’s forever throwing himself down on sophas in a dressing-gown, affecting the _Endymion_ pose,” said Lestrade, his face innocent and his tone not only sugared, but honeyed, as he gave a pale imitation of the drape in question. Sherlock bristled.

“If that’s supposed –”

“That’s not quite the last cry.” John shook his head. “Pike says the mood of the moment is the picturesque, the sublime, ‘the lofty mind of an artist indifferent to fashion’. You know, all creased and even ripped clothes as he ponders ruined abbeys and craggy hills. Some Tulips of the Ton even tear their clothes with bits of glass!”

“Oh, their poor valets and laundry maids!” exclaimed Mrs H.

“This is quite exciting, this waiting to see,” declared John. “We should have a wager on it.”

“Here, you don’t want to get into gambling,” cautioned Lestrade, and Sherlock widened his eyes at the sharp look Lestrade gave him with his words. _What?_ said Sherlock’s shrug. Surely Lestrade didn’t suspect… “We’ll know soon enough.”

“Oh, I’d flutter cousin Piers to have become a full-blown Dandy by now,” said Sherlock. “Changing his starched neckcloth three times a day, exchanging the _Trone d’Amour_ for the Waterfall or the Oriental.”

He…wasn’t. A loud unmusical horn was blown just outside the door, and their first sight wasn’t of a man, but of the three-foot long tin instrument.

“Christ in the clouds, he’s got a yard of tin,” Sherlock breathed. His idiotic cousin then gave a strident whistle, and as Piers entered, Sherlock noticed the numbskull had…had his teeth filed down to be able to emit the shrieking sound.

“Damn me eyes, if it isn’t me cuz Sherl!” yelled the lackwit, his profanity making Mrs Hudson bridle. “Mrs H!” And the oaf clapped a huge hand on her posterior. “I swear on the parson’s nose you’re as prime a filly as any I’ve seen on the Great North Road!” He slapped his thigh loudly and stamped his feet even more loudly. “And you can hang me for sayin’ so.”

“Good Lord, he’s gone coachman crazy,” said Sherlock, regarding his sorry relative in all his wind-blown artfully-dirt-begrimed-face glory. Well, what could be seen of his face – not that it being hidden was necessarily a pity, to Sherlock – between the turned-up to-his-snub- nose collar of his floor-length Garrick great-cloak and the wide brim of his jammed-on top hat. “How many capes are on that monstrosity?” he enquired, pointing to the long dark-brown garment.

“Swelp me if I know!” Piers retorted, trying and failing to shrug his shoulders under the great weight. He juggled the huge whip and the huge horn he carried and approached. Sherlock turned away, so Piers had to made do with backslapping Lestrade and shaking John’s hand for a long, enthusiastic minute, his greeting peppered with such choice items as ‘tandem,’ ‘unicorn,’ ‘harem-scarum’ and ‘good bottom.’ Sherlock made sure to avoid Lestrade’s eyes at that last, and the raucous “There’s nothing like the leather of the reins and the whip!”

“You don’t drive a damn stagecoach!” Sherlock cried. “So leave off all the bawdy slang of the road. In fact, as far as I know, far from being a member of the Four-in-Hand Club, you don’t even have a carriage of any kind!”

“Neither do you,” Lestrade threw in, his easy heart feeling sorry for the deflated air overtaking Piers and the sad droop of his red hair as he removed his hat. “Are you down from Oxford?”

“Sent down, probably,” Sherlock muttered. “It was only ever a matter of time.”

“Strap me till the Sabbath but I’m done with book learnin’,” Piers replied, clearing his throat noisily. With a sinking heart Sherlock recalled how stagecoach drivers tended to spit. He would have betted anything, Lestrade’s strictures on gambling notwithstanding, that Piers had been sitting up next to the driver of the Oxford to London stage, probably paying for ‘coachman’ lessons. He rolled his eyes at John’s asking Piers if he’d abandoned his love of the ‘sweet science’ – John had heard so much about Pier’s being an aficionado of Boxiana, and – Sherlock accidentally caught Lestrade’s eye and had to turn away as Piers called himself Bob Logic, the Oxonian, and compared John and Sherlock to Jerry Hawthorne, esq, and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom. The last thing John needed was a fellow devotee of the print shops to ankle about and soak up novelties with.

“Oh, yes, you need town bronze after the provinces.” John was nodding. “Metropolitan polish. Nothing like it. And of course the family expect Sherlock to –”

“He…re?” Sherlock bit back his instinctive curse. “Impossible, I’m afraid. There’s no free room upstairs and this floor’s taken too. Coincidentally. You’re just too late. What a pity.” He turned away from the two pairs of suspicious eyes – the deep brown ones more distrusting – turned upon him. Lestrade was better off not knowing how far in advance Sherlock laid his plans.

“Odd’s sainted and tainted blood!” Piers exclaimed. “Oh, I say. Guess how I got here, from the coaching inn.”

“Donkey?” Sherlock replied.

“Oh, Cuz! Your monstrous wit! No, a pedestrian curricle. Yes, really, a velocipede! See?” He dragged them all to the street but there was nothing to be glimpsed. “Oh, no! Stolen?” he essayed, his voice doleful.

“Oh, you have to chain everything up around here,” said Sherlock. Billy would leave it in the stables when he was tired of it. Probably. He watched Lestrade pour Piers an enormous drink in compensation for his loss.

“Well, I’m eager to get stuck in to all the town amusements,” Piers declared, slapping Lestrade’s arm in thanks. “I’m the most fearful peep-o’day boy. The revels, the routs, the roustabouts?”

“The rumours,” Sherlock added, thinking back to the day’s events. “Like that of the new Death Club. Have you heard anything about that?”

“Like the _Victimes’_ cult?” Piers drained his glass and any others in the vicinity. “They getting that hoopla-show up again? You must be pleased. You’re still famous in Oxford, you know. Oh, have you still got that cho –”

“Shut up!” hissed Sherlock. “You of all people should understand what being young and somewhat foolish is like!”

“Death cult?” Piers mused, a step behind in the conversation. “Black _is_ back in again.” He sounded like The Woman now. “And séances are all the rage. And there’s a lot of mourning going on. For someone or something. Because of the war, just like all that gaiety of the social whirl as antidote, don’t you know.”

“Have you been to anything like that?” asked John.

“Oh, I’ve nothing to mourn.” Piers slapped his other thigh this time.

“You failed your exams,” said Sherlock.

“What? We haven’t got the results yet,” said Piers, frowning.

“It’s a safe bet,” Sherlock replied.

“Oh yes! Bet! Is that what you meant? I’m well up on all that. I’m no hobnail hick. Yah, it’s all hush-hush and now you see, now you don’t, but I know about it. Yes, you have to bet this thing you can’t see that something won’t happen, then if you're wrong, you pay up.”

There was a silence, long and thick and fogged.

“Something…devilish. Macabre and unholy,” Piers explained, in a whisper through the enormous heel of bread he’d crammed into his mouth.

“That sounds…unlikely,” Sherlock said at last. “And wrong,” he added, for Piers’ benefit.

“Except it’s not. I heard it from Piggles _and_ Stonko.” Piers finished the bottle in counterpoint to his words as he swallowed his mouthful.

“Who are no doubt venerable peers of the realm,” Sherlock glossed, for John and Lestrade.

“Peers, Piers! That’s just bang up to the apple, cousin!” Piers exclaimed. “Ha. Oh, although I’m Pier…s, I’ll never be a peer. Being just a lowly cousin, so far removed.”

“I wish you were,” Sherlock murmured, warmth uncurling in him as Lestrade caught his words and looked down to hide a smile.

“Well, it’s been good to see you again, Piers, but I must go,” Lestrade announced. “We’re springing a trap for stolen Marbles.”

“Marbles? Oh, I used to love those, the old Aggies. I was a complete Mibster. A dab hand at dubs, lagging, and my Steelie was the talk of the school,” Piers declared.

Lestrade looked glad to get away, Sherlock thought.

“Sherlock. A word?” Lestrade said, beckoning him out into the corridor and Sherlock’s heart, that inconvenient, traitorous organ so beloved of poets, thumped. “Whatever you’re planning, be careful,” Lestrade said, his voice low.

“And you,” Sherlock retorted, staring into Lestrade’s eyes.

“But especially you.” Lestrade held his gaze, his own, like his voice, steady and direct. He gave Mrs Hudson a smile as he accepted an oilcloth-wrapped parcel from her. His dinner and supper, Sherlock understood, wondering at Lestrade’s having come home for such a short space of time. Their housekeeper’s cooking wasn’t that much of a gastronomic marvel, surely? At the top of the stairway, Lestrade turned and looked back at Sherlock. He seemed about to speak, but moments passed without him saying anything, merely giving an upwards tilt of his head in salute before descending the stairs. Sherlock re-entered the living room swiftly, to glimpse Lestrade from the window for a few seconds. Turning to the table, he saw Piers had already wolfed down most of the chicken and veal pie. John had made inroads too, Piers’s rough and ready North Road manners catching.

“So, Cuz,” Piers managed around his gargantuan bite of pastry. “Shall we make a roister of it? The gin-hell, the theatre, a club, box the watch and see the sun rise over coffee in the Last Resort?”

My cousin, the living caricature, Sherlock thought, considering. They had the bottom echelon of society covered and one half of the top, but they really needed to be in the thick of the Ton. And it didn’t come much thicker than this Blood in front of him. “Actually, cousin. I wonder if you’d be up for assisting me in my work,” he said, sweeping a hand out towards his wall of pictures, clippings and notes.

“Sherllers! I’m not much of a brainbox, but I’ll do my best!” Piers exclaimed, clapping a puzzled John on the shoulder in delight.

“You’ll do admirably,” said Sherlock, coming up behind the annoying youth and holding a folded cloth to the unstoppered neck of a bottle he was upending. “Simply take this. No, hold it to your face…”

 

“Sherlock.” John finished levering the recumbent Piers to the chair. “Did you have to drug him?”

“Didn’t you want to?” asked Sherlock in surprise.

“Well, yes. A bit,” John admitted, securing Piers by means of cords, at Sherlock’s direction.

“Exactly.” Sherlock threw a blanket over his cousin’s naked form. “Now get into his clothes and we’ll sort out my outfit and accessories.” When John was dressed in the ridiculous outfit and twirling the stupidly long tin horn and slapping his leg with the pathetically long leather whip, Sherlock nodded. He rammed the top hat lower on John’s head and twirled John so he could see himself in the looking-glass. John gave a strangled _cheep_ , his eyes wide. After a second his hands crept up to twist his hat to more advantage. He stood straighter and squared his shoulders.

“So, Cuz, off to flash the screens and dip deep with our five-bottle-men gang, ogle the Paphians and raise some kind of breeze? I’m quite ready to sport my canvas,” John declared in a fatuous tone.

Sherlock groaned. “You’ll do even more admirably,” came his pronouncement.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Benjamin Disraeli for his wonderful novel 'Sybil' to which I helped myself a bit.

_I’m too old for this._ Lestrade tried to strangle the thought at birth but it mewled and hiccupped to life as he ascended the first flight of stairs early the next morning, clinging to the rail. Funny, he usually stopped off at 221B on his way out first thing, not coming in after a heavy night. Another of ’em. Still, least it seemed some of the seven Principal Offices were sharing information across divisions, not acting quite so independently now. Taken the buggers long enough, after the Act that’d set ’em all up. Beggars can’t be choosers, he supposed. He found he’d halted and was peeping, then tiptoeing in. He stopped dead, his breath seizing. Sherlock was emerging…from John’s bedchamber. Dressed in that infernal blue robe and soft slippers, he slipped the door to with quiet care and turned, his eyes widening as he saw Lestrade. He stayed immobile for a moment, then glided forth to the living room.

“What in Hell?” Lestrade gritted out. “You…haven’t… You don’t…” He’d wondered, of course he had, when Sherlock invited John to make his home with him. Hadn’t asked, of course he hadn’t, no more than Sherlock had ever told. But now, seeing this, seeing Sherlock slinking silently from John’s room, he felt heavy and weightless together, his head too cumbersome for his neck and his body drained of life. He thrust out a shaking hand, whether in entreaty or to strike out he didn’t know. He knew he must have paled and he felt cold and feverish in one, wanting to shake. To shake Sherlock. Sherlock, that unprincipled, licentious, deceiving – “I said what!” he cried, feeling better at his voice coming more under his domain. “What were you up to there? You’d better tell me and right now.”

The part of his mind not whited out by a freezing white fog scoffed at that, expected Sherlock to riposte, “Or what?” Instead Sherlock looked back at him, a little pale himself? No. Of course not. But was there something different about him, somehow, a new stillness, a sharper tilt of his head? His reply came slowly, as if from a distance.

“What? Up to? Why, nothing…much.”

“No?” Lestrade was spoiling for a fight, for a confrontation of some sort, he dimly recognised. “Then why do you look so –”

“What. What do I look like.” Sherlock stepped nearer, his eyes narrowed and still that slant to his head, but Lestrade refused to back up.

“Guilty. You look guilty as fucking sin.” And it was his turn to step forward, closing the gap until they were chest to chest. Lestrade must have flickered his gaze towards John’s room, because he saw the moment comprehension dawned in those eerie cracked-blue-ice eyes.

“Guilty? Yes. I’m guilty…of theft, I suppose.”

Lestrade hoped the bated breath he let out at that remark wasn’t audible. Still holding Sherlock’s glance prisoner he was almost startled when Sherlock pressed suddenly against him, and there came a crackle from inside the crossover of the silk robe. Sherlock drew back, just enough to slide his hand in and tug free a bundle of closely written papers. “Petty theft, I should plead, sir,” he finished.

The title might have brought Lestrade up short had Sherlock not jerked his chin to the left. Lestrade followed the direction and turned, catching sight of a mostly naked Piers, lying deeply asleep. Out of habit, Lestrade crossed to him and bent to sniff his breath. He straightened and regarded the corrupt chemist in front of him.

“Why.”

“Maybe reading this will make more sense,” came the answer, as Sherlock glanced through the sheaf of handwritten papers. “Or…maybe not.”

Bewildered, Lestrade allowed himself to be shepherded from the room and obediently started to read the missive…

 

The room was a vast and gleaming saloon, whose decorations would have put Versailles, that silly French excuse for a palace, in the shade. The cream of the Pinks, the loftiest of the Tulips, walked through it and into an apartment of slightly less dimensions than the principal saloon, but not one jot less sumptuous in its general appearance. Hundreds, nay thousands of richly mounted candles shone beams of soft yet brilliant light over a long table glittering with golden platters and heady with vases and jugs of flowers too exotic to be named, although they had names, and some were Latin. The seats on each side of the table were occupied by persons consuming, with a heedless air, delicacies for which they had no appetite; the rare tidbids were nothing to their sated plates.

 

 “That should be palates, I rather think,” Sherlock interrupted, his breath on Lestrade’s neck and a long finger tracing the last word over Lestrade’s shoulder as they descended the stairs. “Carry on?”

 

“Come you from Lady Agatha-Jane Northwood-Westmoreland’s, Pigsy?” questioned a youth of very tender years, and whose fair visage was as downy and as blooming as the peach from which with a languid air he withdrew his lips to make this inquiry of the gentleman with the jewelled cane who was standing to his left in the ornate room in the very heart of the city’s most fashionable district.

“Yes; why were not you there?”

“I never go anywhere,” replied the languorous Ganymede. “Everything bores me so. I feel so cursed blasé!” he exclaimed in a tone of elegant anguish, sweeping a platter  – not his; but he cared not  – to the rich carpet without a thought for the servant who would have to clean it up, of course.

“It will do you all the good in the world to get out,” claimed the slightly Older Man, twirling his cane so the gems sparkled in the light, making the shadows of flattering shards of precious glass play on his face and stepping over the filth on the expensive carpet.

“Nothing can do me good,” yelled the Endymion, throwing away his almost untasted peach. “Just as nothing could do me harm. Waiter, bring me the biggest bottle of champagne you have. And none of that French muck.”

“And bring me one too. Even bigger,” sighed out Lord Eugene FitzClarence Hamish St. De Vere, who was a year older than the speaker, Alfred Chamonix Harborough Longchamps, his companion and brother in listlessness. Both had exhausted life in their teens, and all that remained for them was to mourn, amid the ruins of their reminiscences, over the extinction of excitement. “But make it poor wine. One gets so bored with good wine.”

 

“Sherlock.” Lestrade raised bewildered eyes from the page. “What the… No. Just _what_? I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I’m…in the kitchen?” He looked around.

“Indeed. Here.” Sherlock pushed down on Lestrade’s shoulder to get him to sit, then slid a plate of roast beef and slices of bread across to him. “I’ll heat milk for cocoa.”

“Cocoa?” Lestrade was dubious. “Isn’t that an aphro –”

“Greg.” The word stopped him, as Sherlock had intended. “Do shut up and eat. And read.”

“What am I reading?” Lestrade grinned and slapped cut beef onto a slice of bread.

“John’s account of our evening.”

“Ahh.” Lestrade began to understand. He read aloud, “My heart beat faster and my face pinkened for I was here in this beating heart of the fashionable world under false colours,” and had to stop lest he choked on his breakfast.

“I know,” Sherlock commiserated. “One he finds an image, he –”

“Beats the beating pink heart out of it.” Lestrade skimmed ahead. “Was he really disguised as a flower of the Ton?”

“Very much so. Piers Holmes to be precise,” Sherlock informed him.

“Ah, hence the naked man on the fainting couch.” Lestrade saw it all. “You’d better warn Mrs H –”

A shrill cry sounded from above their heads.

“Never mind,” Lestrade finished. “Is any of this faradiddle true?”

“What, exactly? I haven’t read it,” Sherlock confessed. “Just I saw John positively itching to scribble and once home he was practically burning up with the need to scrawl.”

“Well, for example, this strange unsettled mood. All this entitlement, social leapfrogging and haste as parvenus demand immediate gratification, want what they pay for, the social order rocked by the middle classes buying and winning landed estates etcetera.” Lestrade tapped the pages and reached out to the fruit bowl Sherlock passed down the length of polished wood. He smiled at his unconventional host. “Bit of a reversal, this. It’s usually me coaxing you,” he added, indicating the emptied plate and taking up his cup.

“Not…all the time. You need coaxing on occasions,” replied the wicked gamester, his feathery brow arched, inviting shared reminiscences and making Lestrade splutter around a mouthful of warm chocolate drink. “At first at any rate,” Sherlock murmured. Lestrade resolutely refused to hark back to that time, that _at first_ time, with that tall, slim, angelic-faced but ill-mannered aristocrat whose latest pastime seemed to be public office crime scenes and especially telling said public officers what they should be doing on said scenes of crime as he whirled about with a pert, slappable look on his beautiful face and bending over to show off even more pert, even more slappable b –

“You’re confusing coaxing with _provoking_ ,” he muttered back, the memory beating at him, despite his efforts to beat it back, of Sherlock’s goading and baiting and Lestrade’s…finally snapping. Well, it would: he summoned it up often enough…when he needed it. Could and did recall all the details in crystal clarity. With full sensual sensation, as that popular ditty about The Woman had it. He really hoped any blush could be attributed to the heat of the stove. The kitchen was overwarm. “Still, this is good of you,” he persisted, a valiant effort.

“Oh, Mrs Hudson gave me strict orders to feed and water you,” Sherlock dismissed. “We don’t want to annoy her. She won’t make kedgeree if she’s in a snit.”

“Since when were you, _you_ , scared of your housekeeper? Huh. Wonders never cease,” Lestrade scoffed. “And I don’t recall you being over fond of that dish, anyway.” Not like _he_ was.

“I’m not.” Sherlock’s answer came pat and suave.

“Yes, well.” Lestrade cleared his throat and returned his gaze to the handwritten pages he perused. He saw John had put all his gossip column reading and field research to good use, as he skipped along the page or so of analysis of the scene and the setting. John’s perspective was that of the outsider, the onlooker seeing most of the game, “…and many games were being played. Played and won and lost. There were winners and losers, ringleaders and prey, in the thrust and parry and pitch and toss and ebb and flow of that St James’s Street battlefield. Like any tribe, there were alpha leaders and beta followers and omega runts, squealing and struggling to keep up…”’

Lestrade read the description of the tiny, slight pilgarlic, looked upon with humorous contempt and mock pity, for all he was some minor Emerald Isle aristocrat, trying to scrum into the fray, attempting to elbow into the thick of it here, egg on a Buck here, stir things up there. “Sherlock,” Lestrade began, tapping a sentence on the page. “Why am I reading, ‘my companion was especially curt with the ninnyhammer’?”

“I don’t think I was _especially_ ,” Sherlock retorted. “Beyond telling him he was doing it rather too brown trying to strut about when it was patently obvious he was a lickspittle. A fawning subordinate,” he kindly explained. “I told him to try again once he’d assumed the cacafuego guise more thoroughly.”

Lestrade closed his eyes rather than roll them at Sherlock instructing someone to take on the manner of a swaggering braggart. “Hang fire,” he said, suddenly catching something. “Try what again?” He opened his eyes at the slight pause.

“Never mind.” Sherlock’s fingers moved as if crumpling a small pasteboard card. “Lay on?”

“If you lay off,” Lestrade retorted, raising a smile from his breakfast companion. He cleared his throat and continued, as asked:

‘“I noted something strange, something out of kilter in that guilded salon full of glittering bodies, that celestial chamber housing heavenly members, for which the trained eye, the dual eye of an experienced, battle-hardened soldier and seasoned medical physician was needed, for the vast majority, the teeming crowds would and did have passed it by, unregarding…’” He started at the slight noise from the back door, his heart settling again when Sherlock bent to the floor and scooped up the newcomer. “He’s back again,” Lestrade observed. “And you still say he’s not yours?”

“I don’t have _pets_ ,” Sherlock sniffed, his long fingers stroking the cream fur, making the elegant Siamese throw back its slim-muzzled head. Its eerie silver-blue stare pinned Lestrade as the beast tilted its head and sized him up.

“I wasn’t meaning you had a _pet_ ,” Lestrade murmured, the word _familiar_ taking up position in his brain as it did whenever he saw the uncanny feline who sought out no one but Sherlock, especially when, as now, Sherlock bent his head low as if listening to the beast whisper to him, in the way that unnerved Lestrade, and so made the degenerate do it more. Actually, Lestrade wondered what put more of a shiver down his spine, Sherlock ‘talking’ to the dumb animal or the sight of those elegant, clever fingers speedily eliciting such satisfied chirrups from the normally aloof creature. Which of course the wretch did on purpose too.

“Hmm.” The human equivalent of the cat’s purr sounded decadent, sinful almost in the homely kitchen. “I don’t think the soldier and doctor helped. Perhaps the jaded social chronicler and commenter of the opening paragraphs, had John but spotted the –”

‘“The incongruous almost imperceptible off-note in the hurly burly, the merry-go-grig, the push and pull of the scene,”’ Lestrade read on, sighing, “I wish someone would say what it was. I’m all agog here.”

“An old man wearing a black feather.”

Lestrade made a face at Sherlock. “Hardly worth all that wordiness, surely.”

“Perhaps not, if after most the evening spent is a state of nervous excitement, during which he was almost bursting with the effort not to reveal something as he repeated he couldn’t stay, he had to go soon, the old cove hadn’t vanished for almost an hour and reappeared…wearing _two_ black feathers,” Sherlock replied.

“So what did you…” Lestrade returned to studying the epistle and was by now adept at translating all the bombast and flummery about _noble guises_ and _swags of thick damask silk_ and _concealment in the night dark_. “You got ‘Piers’ to ply him with brandy-wine and engage him in a hand of baccarat while you hid behind the curtains!”

“Quite. And he dished the sauce,” Sherlock confirmed.

‘“A dark club, a secret séance, with one black feather as entrée and two as compact’?” Lestrade felt a chill now, shiver be damned.

“And I’d have got more if that tiresome little Earl of Erehwon hadn’t come back in, now posturing about like a bantam hen, or a, a cockalorum!” Sherlock exploded, his emotion making the cat leap down and slink away with an indignant meow in his direction.

“Wait. I don’t… People are attending some sort of _séance_ , but in _reverse_?” Lestrade asked, trying to understand. “I mean, only _after_ the meeting does someone _die_?”

“I would seem so. And attach that to what Piers said, that you have to wager the person _won’t_ die?”

Lestrade was silent for a moment, willing the weight of normality, the familiar scents and sounds of the kitchen to soothe him. “Sherlock, communing with _spirits_? With _devils_? I don’t believe in any of that,” he finally essayed.

“And you’d be right.” Sherlock’s hands struck the wood of the table on his last word as he stood. He walked round to Lestrade. “I analysed the snuff. My tests took a while, but showed what I expected. Poison. Staverton, the rest; they’re victims.”

“ _Murder victims_ ,” Lestrade breathed. “But who?”

“Yes, the beneficiaries are never around at the scene, at the time. It seems –”

But his sentence was never completed, for at that second came a quiet, scratchy _rappity-tap_ at the window behind them which had them jumping out of their skins and clinging to the other. 2655

They both whirled around to face the high window, Lestrade peering to make out the wavering round shadow, a patch of dark in the feeble early morning light of the yard, moving along towards the door. He pushed at Sherlock, managing to get him heading for the door into the hallway, despite his indignant cheeps. Hoping whoever this was hadn’t done away with Billy in order to gain access, Lestrade grabbed up a knife and made for the back door in two swift steps. He slipped to one side in concealment, his purpose set and resolute, especially when there came another tap before the door slowly opened. A slight, apologetic cough was heard, then a whispered, “Mrs Hudson?” and a slight, trembling dark-haired girl poked her head around the door, her face white and her eyes huge.

“Ah, Molly!” exclaimed Sherlock, striding towards the reluctant visitor. “Do come in. Don’t mind Lestrade” – who was trying to conceal his naked blade – “He’s just about to slice more bread to toast. Inspector Lestrade, Bow Street Runner, Molly Hooper, a companion of my youth turned maid to Earl and Countess Polstead, the former lately killed at Vauxhall, and the latter…who’s provided a clue to help solve the murder, unless I’m very much mistaken. Coffee with your toast, Molly?”

Lestrade’s hissed, “Sherlock!” and Molly’s scandalised, “Sir!” collided, as did his protests he wasn’t a Runner, there wasn’t any such thing and _he_ damned well knew it, oh, a thousand apologies, miss, and hers that she wasn’t, wouldn’t presume, hadn’t, wouldn’t dream of, and _them_ , serve _her_ breakfast? It wasn’t seemly…

They managed to get her sitting at the table and accepting a cup of milk and slice of buttered bread. “Much more seemly than coffee and toast?” Lestrade queried, serving her, sensing the determination that had led her to defy propriety and risk the early morning London streets on her mission. She’d slipped out, she admitted, tagging along with the groom on his errand.

“He’s awaiting for me in the carriage two streets along. Says oh, so I’ve got myself a sweetheart have I, and if I’m not back in fifteen minutes by the church clock on the corner he’ll come along so I’m not ruined and…” She blushed and put her hand over her mouth.

“I’ll meet him for you,” Lestrade offered, fancying he could play the part of a butler, or, God, coachman. Piers’ coat seemed one size fits all. Sherlock gave him a sharp look.

“And he won’t ruin you,” he muttered. “Molly, do tell us what happened. Last night, if the shadows under your eyes are any indication. And it’s connected with the groom’s errand, isn’t it? Which is something…clandestine, necessitating a physically stronger and less refined servant, one more used to the rough of the streets than the smooth of the footmen’s drawing rooms and the valet’s bedchamber. Someone from an East End orphanage, taken in by the late earl, that well-known soft heart. And I’ve instructed you to call me Sherlock. She was about to Sir me again,” he finished, addressing the last to Lestrade.

“Well perhaps if you were to pause long enough to draw breath and let the lady speak!” Lestrade replied, in no doubts that Sherlock was on the mark, and slicing an apple for Molly. “Start with today. Where’ve you come from, Miss?”

“Rundell and Bridge, Sir,” she answered. “Ludgate –”

“Hill, north of the Strand,” Sherlock cut in. “Jewellers who not only sell jewellery and trinkets but also come to the aid of stricken aristocrats with jewels to sell to raise readies. Let me see…the much-tittered-about w _hiskey-coloured diamond, said by Lady Jersey to be in fact the hue of cold tea, mounted into that hideous turban aigrette, perchance?”_

 _“_ Yes, Si-Sherlock.” Molly’s eyes were the size of the plate in front of her.

“Mrs H pass on her old _La Belle Assemblee_ magazines, does she?” Lestrade asked him, to be ignored. He watched Sherlock pace the length of the room.

“Hmm. So Countess Polstead, that East Indies nabob, needs money in a hurry and can’t tell her indulgent father. Why? Although I can guess.”

“Because the spirit from the otherworld what came to her last night demanded it!” came Molly’s unbelievable answer. “Least, that’s what we think.”

“I’m _fairly_ sure you wouldn’t have guessed that.” Lestrade nudged Sherlock and got him to sit as Molly launched into the tale of how the bedridden, grief-poleaxed countess had suffered a visitation from beyond in the dead of night.

“Did you see the apparition?” Lestrade asked her.

“I saw…something, when I rushed in to help her. A figure all in black, vanishing into the night. And this morning, Lily the scullery maid and Mick the groom said they saw a ghost, floating over the roof. Lily thought it was the earl’s soul, and Mick said, when she sent him on this job, that must be what her ladyship wants the money for, to buy peace of spirit. Like with a gift to the church, having prayers said in a new chapel, or endowing a new curate?”

“It’s possible,” said Lestrade, not looking at Sherlock. The clock struck, and Molly exclaimed, leaping up.

“It’s fine,” Lestrade assured her, cutting through her apologies and lamentations. He shouted for Billy to accompany her, poking Sherlock until the ill-mannered one added his thanks and praise to Lestrade’s. In the silence following Molly’s departure, he looked at Sherlock. “So, a convenient death – her ladyship’ll be ruling the roost now, now she’s carrying the heir to the earldom and the estates,” he said slowly. “If it’s a boy.”

“Oh, she’ll swop it at birth if not.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “But yes, she’s calling the tune now.”

“And…paying the piper, looks like. Do you reckon Molly’d know if her mistress suddenly started to wear a black feather, recently? And how can we find out if any of the other people who benefitted from the deaths wore one? Seems impossible. Oh.” He stared harder at Sherlock. “What. Tell me. I know that look.”

“We know of one person who wore one, briefly, recently. Someone who, at my orders, railed continually at his lot, that he’d –”

“Never be a peer of the realm,” Lestrade finished, hearing Piers’s voice bray out the sentiment and imagining John as Piers making a fair copy of it, for all to hear.

“Or the heir, even, although he’d be content with that, to extend his credit limits, what with his cousins standing in the way. Oh, and one cousin treats him abominably.” Sherlock nodded.

“Bet you did an’ all,” Lestrade breathed. “Did it to a cow’s thumb.”

“I was rather high in the instep,” Sherlock admitted, a wicked smirk on his face. “But it got us…this.”

He drew _this_ slowly from his robe pocket, making the black gleam almost blue as he held it to catch the light. The black of the…feather.

“And all the evidence would point to it activating…tonight.” Sherlock spoke slowly, manipulating the feather in and out of the fingers of his right hand, as Lestrade had seen him do with a coin or a playing card.

“How so?” he queried.

“No sightings of a spate of feather-wearing amongst the beautiful people,” Sherlock answered. “No mention in Langdale Pike, at least, which is the same thing. The old windbag from last night slipped his on discreetly and shot off soon after.” He took up the feather and stroked absently down his nose with it. Funny thing was, Lestrade felt the soft tickle down _his_ , and shivered, and when Sherlock traced the feather’s tip around his lips, Lestrade again felt the phantom touch on his own.

“Where,” he began and coughed, having to smooth the feather from Sherlock’s face and his hand to speak normally. “Where do you reckon it’ll happen? I mean, there’s a whole calendar of events going on. Balls, theatre parties, dances, masquerades, military reviews… You name it.”

“Is that a challenge?” Sherlock slanted a look at him, then at where Lestrade’s hand still rested on top of his. He made no attempt to twitch his free. “Because indeed I shall. Bond Street. Number 24, to be precise.”

“That’s not…the boxing school?”

“Farther along.”

“That fancy tailor? No use you tutting at me. I’m not you or John, walking talking maps and atlases and almanacs of the Ton.” Tiring of the game, Lestrade stood, feeling colder at the loss of Sherlock’s shared heat.

“Sir Thomas Lawrence’s studio.”

“The portrait painter?” He stopped, the used crockery gathered in his hands.

“So you do know the ins and outs of the fashionable world, Inspector.” Sherlock stood, but despite Lestrade holding out a hand to be passed more dishes for the sink, merely leaned against the door, folded- armed. “Yes, it’s a sign one’s someone if one’s admitted to pop in and see the man daubing his latest work of genius.”

“Gives one something to do between one’s shirt maker and one’s club, what,” Lestrade joined in.

“I wouldn’t know. Despite my station, my lot, I don’t subscribe to those vacuous pursuit prescribed for the idle classes.”

“Hey,” Lestrade broke in, not liking Sherlock’s tone. “I know you don’t. I wouldn’t have much in common with you else, now would I? But Sir Thomas won’t be holding a painting session at night, will he? He’ll need natural light.” He leant in to refasten Sherlock’s gown more securely around him. Sherlock often looked pale and chill.

“Oh, the Marchioness of Conyngham,the very largest of the regent’s mistresses, has got upa supper unveiling of Lawrence’s latest portrait of the prince. It’s a marvel, I’m given to understand. Even better than his three previous. Knocks quite fifteen years and at least thirty pounds off him. Oh. Thank you.”

His last words startled Lestrade. Not just Sherlock saying thanks, but for them being in response to the scarf Lestrade had looped around his neck for him, unwinding it from his own to do so. He didn’t recall deciding to do so, or in fact doing so.

“There’s also a small exhibition of the painter’s work, a display calculated to propel him to being appointed president of the Royal Academy.”

“I see.” Lestrade rolled his eyes, imagining the beaux monde jostling and elbowing their way amongst the rich, posed pictures, and their fatuous cries of _marvellous_ and _splendid_ ringing to the rafters. Imagined Sherlock, springing a trap, right in the heart of the heavyweights, the barons, the dukes, and oh, God, princes. Narrowed his eyes in warning. “Sherlock – no.”

“Greg – yes.” And just in case Lestrade could resist the magic of his name, spoken like that, the scoundrel winked. Actually winked, closing one unearthly blue-green eye to the accompaniment of a clicky sound.

“On one condition.” Oh, he was such an easy…

“What?”

“I’m there too.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sherlock answered, loosing a smile that reminded Lestrade very strongly of that bloody Siamese cat. He tried, really tried, not to think he’d just been reeled in, a tiny sprat, a morsel for the feline majesty.

“And now, to convince Piers he was quite the knave-in-grain among the Haut Monde and needs to sleep it off,” Sherlock said, leaving Lestrade to follow him to 221B.

“And don’t tell me we’re borrowing more of his clothes again this evening for John to pass off as him again? It’d be easier just to enlist his help,” Lestrade suggested.

“Not really. And he’s happier unconscious. Well, better off,” Sherlock observed. He suddenly stopped, halfway up the stairs, and Lestrade ran into him. “Oh, and we need an invite to the soirée.”

Lestrade really didn’t like the way Sherlock was eyeing him, that detached, clinical air of speculation. “Sherlock, what, Sherlock? What are you… I’m not gonna like this, am I.”

 

“At last! Oh, how you’ve played it cool and kept me waiting, you sly Argent Agent, Inspector Lestrade! If another man so much as _tried_ to treat me like that…”

The second purring person of the day, thought Lestrade as The Woman extended a deceptively delicate hand from her carriage window. “So of course, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got your message about wanting to see me, to take me out and show me off this evening and…”

Lestrade took his eyes from the beautiful woman and turned to side-eye Sherlock, clattering after him into the Baker Street road.

“Oh.” Irene dropped the throaty purr. “So many of you?”

“Kind of you to give us a lift,” Sherlock said, his voice bland as he ushered a trembling John into the elegant town coach, shoving Irene over.

“But surely that’s… Oh. I _see_. An _undercover agent_ ,” came in that low whisper that thrilled audiences. “I knew that naïve coat-tail persona was just an act. Well, fine date this is,” she carped, her voice turning shrewish.

“It isn’t strictly speaking a _date_ ,” Lestrade hurried to explain.

“Oh no, of course.” She was known for rallying quickly. “I’m so thrilled to be your partner and aide you to carry out your mission! Me, bringing down a Bonapartist spy in High Society! It’s like a circulating library novel,” she breathed.

“Isn’t it just,” Lestrade replied grimly, kicking Sherlock’s ankle as Irene rattled on about their partnership, promising to be discreet about the medal she’d be presented with after the successful conclusion to the adventure: she’d wear it somewhere it didn’t show…to the public. It would be their little shared secret and… Even so, Lestrade kept his gaze on her as she spoke. Well, he couldn’t look at John, all made up pale with black shadows under his eyes, trailing ribbons from his lace sleeves like mucky cobwebs and clutching a lace hanky the size of a towel.

 

“Oh, don’t be such a yea or nay man!” Sherlock had exploded when Lestrade had demurred about ransacking Piers’ travelling portmanteau. So rifle it they had and found… _wonders_.

“That’s how he gets all those styles! I didn’t think he’d have the patience,” Mrs H had exclaimed as the thick, fat, canvas roll-up wrap had unrolled to reveal… a set of ginger wigs. She clapped the Tumbling Fall onto John’s head, threaded black silk ribbons in _à la Gothique_ , and John had spent the day studying, how to be “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart.” Lestrade had rapidly grown tired of John’s exclamations of “Ah horror,” and “Oh terror,” and, “How too, too, sublime,” as he wrenched his head to one side to stare into the distance like a simplewit, his hanky to his mouth like he had the tooth-ache or to his eye like he had a rheum.

“John is counterfeiting my cousin, Piers,” Sherlock said.

“And where’s the real Piers?” came Irene’s question.

“Somebody took exception to me rendering him unconscious using sodium hypochlorite solution mixed with ethanol,” said Sherlock, with a kick of his own at Lestrade’s ankles. Lestrade, expecting it, whipped his feet away, regretting it when they brushed up against The Woman’s. By the look on her face, she didn’t.

“ _Again_ ,” Lestrade corrected. “Somebody objected to you drugging the poor sot into oblivion _again_.”

“And…” Irene prompted.

“Things got a little involved,” Lestrade tried to explain. “I don’t think Piers quite understood.”

“Were you really expecting him too?” Sherlock threw in.

“Seemed to think it was sort of living charades.”

“Meaning? _Do_ tell,” ordered The Woman with a well-practiced coquettish wriggle.

“Meaning…he’s dressed as a coachman and gone courting a maid at Countess Polstead’s,” finished Lestrade, still not quite sure how it had come about. “He preferred it to being made unconscious.”

“Who wouldn’t,” asked La Adler cryptically. “And Dr Watson is…a Romantic Agonist? ‘That man of loneliness and mystery, scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh’?”

“Oh no. He’s been sighing like a bellows,” Lestrade muttered, and Irene hid a smile.

“Hmm. It’s not quite up to snuff. If you’ll allow me…” She reached into her reticule and a second later, a tiny pair of scissors gleamed in her hand, then at John’s hair. _Snick-snick_ , once, then again, and two locks of auburn hair were snipped free, leaving obvious gaps. “He really ought to be proudly showing the lovelocks he’s cut off and presented to women, for all they proved base and faithless and undeserving of his affections, casting him deeper into melancholy,” she explained. “He would have presented the locks in lockets he had made up to his own designs.” She patted her hair, drawing attention to the slight asymmetry of the style. “And I’m glad you’ll ‘treat it as it should be treated,”’ she said suddenly, leaning into Lestrade, her voice low and intimate.

“Er, well, yes, of course – that is, I mean to say…” Lestrade ran a finger under his cravat.

“Inspector.” The Woman laughed as she patted his knee. “I understand. It’s deeds not pretty speeches with you. Although you do make a fair hand at written notes.” She treated him to her most bewitching smile, the one that had snared her her current, titled, protector.

“Sherlock.” Lestrade didn’t take his gaze from The Woman’s, but his stern bark was directed at the shameless ne’er-do-well sitting across and down from him. “When we’ve time, when this is over, I’ll be having a serious word with you. In private.” He frowned as Irene shivered voluptuously.


	8. Chapter Eight

“Oh buggeration. Oh, begging your pardon,” John added, colouring at having blasphemed in front of a lady as they made their way into the long, wide wooden-floored-and-walled crowded studio. “Just I thought I’d be quite the last bounce, but look.”

“Why,” Lestrade enquired, looking back as directed at the small knot of young men in the hallway, all wearing rolled-up trousers and ruffled shirts, cutlasses shoved into their huge cummerbunds, “are they dressed as pirates? Christ, it’s not fancy dress, is it?”

“Why, it’s the latest thing, _à la Corsaire_!” The small, slim dark-haired man seemed to pop up near them. His almost black eyes turned huger and dreamier as he quoted, ‘“Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt from all affection and from all contempt…”’

Not true, Lestrade thought, feeling the great contempt he felt towards the trio of poseurs must be tangible to them. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” he announced. “Bloody –”

“Byron,” Sherlock finished for him. “Lestrade, this is Tantony.”

“No it isn’t,” John said, frowning down at the smaller man. “We met him last night. His name’s –”

“Immaterial. I suppose I confused his name with his habit of following like a St Anthony pig.” Sherlock gave a tight smile and strode deeper into the room.

Lestrade wondered if he should apologise for Sherlock’s having compared the man to the smallest pig in the litter, struggling to keep up, and caught his eye, only to recoil at the sudden darkness in it. Not just the colour, although the near black was unusual, but the utter stillness, mirroring the jumpy little man’s sudden immobility as he focussed on Sherlock, his entire being seeming to narrow to that point. Lestrade blinked as if a beam had been turned on him, but a dark light, obscuring the brightness of day. If that were possible. It was certainly fanciful.

Then the small man gave a sort of shrug and rolled his head on his neck, just as Irene thrust her arm through Lestrade’s and swept him into the crush. Actually, the crowd tended to part for her, and perforce him, he discovered, as people moved aside and feasted their eyes on her as she walked. She drew a crowd, all male, creeping nearer to her as if pulled on wires, as she moved from one painting to another, paintings Lestrade thought so overblown and sentimental they wouldn’t look out of place on the lids of those boxes of chocolates Sherlock got Mrs H from that swanky grocer’s when he’d stepped too far out of line.

“Lovely job with the rouge,” commented Irene, pointing at a picture of a woman, all bosom and bows. “I must get Old Thom to do my makeup for me when I’m pale and out of sorts.” She pressed a finger to the side of her mouth, as if poking in a dimple, and paused, looking at Lestrade. It took a cough and a nudge from Sherlock for Lestrade to jump in with a scoffing, “As if!” Best he could manage. He wasn’t up on the flowery, sugary speeches required for this.

“These are quite vile,” announced Sherlock, garnering a chorus of gasps and exclamations in reply. “Look at how they idealise and flatter the sitters, depicting them in all this muslin and fur and satin and silk.”

“Well, they’re advertisements, more or less,” Irene said. “Look how young and thin he’s made Daisy Hatton so she can catch another man now Sir Luke’s given her her congé. In fact, I think this painting was it. So she could display the goods.”

Most people, Sherlock included, stared at her.

“Oh I say! _Regardez_ the _homme_ portraits over _la_!” cried John, doing his best as Piers. “All those stormy, melodramatic backgrounds are so… _masculin_.”

“Yet the men almost feminine,” Sherlock capped. “For all the arrogance of their poses.”

“They look quite dashing,” was Lestrade’s contribution over a chorus of more gasps and sound effects answering Sherlock’s appraisals. He couldn’t see himself in the vivid clothes, though, or the peacock hairstyles, giving such a smouldering glance over one shoulder at viewers. Could imagine Sherlock, though. He lost himself in the idea, the grand portrait of Sherlock, Viscount Holmes, captured in his white ruffled chemisette and tight leather breeches and shiny boots, riding crop in one hand, leather gloves in the other, tall hat under his arm, staring out from the canvas. No one else would be invited to view the likeness – it was just for Lestrade. His alone. As…the original would never be. No. Ridiculous. No painter would be able to capture that face, that gaze, those eyes, those lips… “Smart,” he tacked on, looking round at the tutts this elicited.

“As paint,” quipped Irene.

It was the eddies of applause and ripples of _damn clever_ and _hear, hear_ which greeted that and Sherlock’s continued stream of critiques of the _glaring brushstrokes_ and the _one expression fits all sitters_ that made Lestrade realise. Helped him to understand that the loud intakes of breath and the interjections were their fellow guests’ approval at the wit and audacity, not shocked horror at the disparagements. Any disapproval had been at his own bland comments. Even if all the devil-hang-me milordism was caused by the insecurity and bleakness of the prolonged war, well, they could still be less _awful_. Couldn’t they?

He grabbed at a servitor’s arm to stop him so he could skim two drinks from his salver and drain them straight off. This, ironically, earned him applause and approbation.

“Your face, Inspector! Positively sour,” The Woman commented. “I hate it too, how the show-off your new money behaviour of the _arrivestes_ is spreading throughout the Ton, making it de rigeur for any gathering now to be so damned overblown. Overcrowded, overcatered, overdone.” She wrinkled her nose. “All the competition. If it were a card game, it would be beggar your neighbor. Don’t you think?”

It was, Lestrade silently thought. Very competitive, feverish, almost, the rate they all vied to outdo one another. Like now, with the tide going against Sherlock, and those present taking turns to rib him for being seen at two society events in a row after such a long absence. Guesses as to said absence and this new taste for company ranged from the sponging-house to having to repair his fortunes by being on the catch for some new-minted coin, as the poisonous group was stirred up to egg one another on. Sherlock, two red splashes of colour high on his cheeks, stared over their heads and ignored them all.

‘Piers,’ seeming to forget he wasn’t in his Blood rig that evening, tried to stem the tide by mentioning Tattersall’s and the matched bays he was thinking of dropping serious ching-ching on. It turned the tide all right, to the men bragging about their _equipage_ which Irene’s stage whisper translated as “the power between their thighs,” leaving Lestrade still more than a little uneasy. The boasts flew thicker and faster, punctured by more and more pointed jibes and barbs. Irene, bored, inveigled her escort into taking her for a turn around the room just as Sherlock, unable to maintain silence in the face of one ruddy-cheeked cove’s claim exploded.

“One and twenty hours? Plain impossible. More like one and thirty – despite the latest turnpike legislation and the improvement in road construction techniques developed by Telford and MacAdam, the _mail_ still takes a day to get from London to Liverpool, sir!” he sniped.

“Egads! Who’d want to send mail there?” came with a mock shiver from an affected-looking youth who would have been at home in John’s attempt at Dandy-reality fiction, or whatever that genre called itself. Lestrade had no time to hear more before he was steered away by his determined escort. The other small groups they came upon and the chatter these were indulging in was equally as vacuous – and vicious.

“Is it my lack of understanding, or is it all ‘who did what where’?” he asked his guide.

“And to whom and how,” she confirmed. A speculative gleam came into her eyes. “I love how you’re above all that. All that sordid scrambling and elbowing to get into place. You’re so…there and…solid.”

“Yeah…” was his feeble riposte, especially as Irene patted her hand against his chest, and left it there. “I’ve been meaning to eat less of Mrs Hudson’s tea cakes.”

“Or you could bring me a supper-basket after my performance. I’m always famished then,” Irene replied. “Ravenous. _Gasping_ …”

The evening became dreamlike to Lestrade, all the rooms with different paintings and different food and drink, and the never-ending press of bodies spinning with colours and clamourous with cries, sickly with scents and strident with shrieks. He’d just about grown used to the ducking and weaving that was an evening with The Woman, and the sparing and parrying that was the fending off all-comers off that was an evening with The Woman, and the shuffling and sidestepping around all the beautiful people when he noticed John, feather-besporting John, slipping out.

Sherlock! Was a room or two back, trapped in a baying, chops-licking mob. “I have to leave,” he hissed at his companion, tipping his head at the door.

“You’ve seen him? Boney’s agent?” she whispered back, her hand around his ear, her scent cloying, clawing at his throat. “Here.” Lestrade flinched as she guided his hand to her thigh and the strange bump. “Take it.” She shimmied and twitched, making his hand slip under her skirts and land on…the dagger, small but deadly, strapped high on her leg. “Go on!” she demanded as he stood there. “Nice as it is to have you appreciating my…assets. Don’t waste time. Oh, I’ve another. Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. I’ll cover for you.”

“Keep Sherlock here,” Lestrade ordered, not knowing why he’d said that, or how she was to accomplish it. Just felt…something. She nodded, heated-eyed and red-lipped, her gaze following him as he rushed out. Rushed out where? He had no idea where John could be going, could have gone. No idea except- He pounced on the screwed-up ball of paper out of place on the street and flattened it. Written in thick black ink were the words _the pale horse_. What the hell in heaven was that supposed to mean?

He whipped his head around, staring up and down the fashionable street, still populated this time of day, the pavements dotted with amblers, and the street with…carriages. One in particular, a light, four-wheeled Brougham, its black paint sleek, its front-facing window and side windows curtained over, its black-caped driver perched on the box seat in front, was pulled, not by a dun or chestnut or bay that were standard, were commonplace, but by…a pale horse.

There was no way to tell if John was in there, but as the carriage passed, Lestrade saw a tumble of lace and a dangling black ribbon trapped in the door. His mind conjured up John, unused to both his Romantic disguise and the small, tight Brougham doors, catching his trailing sleeve in the door, and, despite the seriousness of the situation, he almost laughed. Resigned, he looked around, then snatched a black stove-pipe hat off the head of some young buck entering the studio, countering the exclamations and attempts at retrieving it with a flash of his brass tipstaff and a loud, “Public Officer Emergency Requisition!”

Mood I’m in, that ninnybrain’s lucky I didn’t bring out the cuffs and pistol, was his thought as he crammed the damned hat on as a disguise and trotted off after the vehicle.

Where in Hades was in going? Round in a circle, or a square: however you called it, after a trot down Bond Street, a hard left, a right, and another left they weren’t that far away from where they’d started, when the coach slowed. He wished he’d known. Was that the mouth of an alley? No; the entrance to a mews. Lestrade, still winded from the chase, hung back as John got out and walked slowly down the narrowed cobbled space tucked behind the fashionable main street. Lestrade pushed through the other figures milling about – a lot for such a back street, surely? – and saw John, presumably following the directives on the paper he carried in his hand, walk to the end and…the door that stood open there.

Straining, peering, Lestrade could make out the narrow flight of stairs the door gave onto and…the tall figure, swathed from head to toe in black, standing at their head. Lestrade wanted to rub his eyes, make sense of what he what he thought he was seeing, but a second’s glimpse was all he was afforded before John entered, and closed and bolted the door behind him, cleverly discarding the sheet of paper as he did so, crumpling it into the same shape as the other.

Lestrade pounced on it, but it gave, as he’d surmised, simple instructions to take the end, open, door and bolt it behind him. Damn. Then a whoop and cheer, so out of place in this endeavour, caught his attention and he turned to assess the merry-makers gathered around the building which took up most of the alley. They were all male, perhaps not surprisingly, but seemed a mixture of ages and, well, social stations. Noise spilled from the establishment’s window as it was raised for a man to call down to the street, and Lestrade gazed up, to see a sign bearing a crudely daubed picture of a man in a long curly black wig, wearing an opulent purple cloak…and a crown. He was holding a bunch of purple fruit, at which he stared, his tongue peeping out to lick it. Lestrade didn’t need the C R II or to realise that the fruit was grapes to understand the bacchanalian nature of the place.

Coffee house? Tavern? Bath-house? He didn’t care, nor that it seemed to be a molly-house disguising itself as a more standard house of ill-repute. Didn’t care that –

“Dimmock?” He gaped at the small, neat figure of his constable guarding the door. He must have rushed past him a minute earlier and not seen him in his hurry and the crush.

“Inspector! I, I…”

“Aye aye indeed,” Lestrade answered the man.

“It’s not a bagnio,” Dimmock almost squealed, his words tumbling thick and fast. “Not a brothel. It’s a place of pleasure, not profit.” He shut up and flushed, catching up with what he said.

“Then it’s not illegal for you to be working here as security when you’re off shift, then, is it?” Lestrade took pity on him. “And I don’t care what it is as long as I can get inside. And quickly.”

“Oh, _he-llo_ Mistress Eager,” said a man walking in, eyeing him. “It’s always the ones who don’t look _royal_ ,” he commented to Dimmock, who stood, still looking confused, still blocking Lestrade’s way.

“Dimmock, I’m not here for cuddling and bussing. Nor am I any kind of trepanner,” Lestrade said, staring hard.

“Sir!” Dimmock looked horrified, whether at the thought of his superior officer wanting to partake of the house’s delights, or at the mere thought of an informer in their midst, Lestrade couldn’t say.

“I just need to be able to see or hear what’s going on in a room –” He broke off as another man entered and gave him a once-over. “Next door.” He indicated the door down the news. “I’m investigating a very serious case.”

That last word must have been the Open Sesame, he reflected, heading upstairs, averting his eyes as much as he could from the couples catching each other’s eyes across the crowd, or flirting or arguing, or sitting in each other’s laps or dancing to the romantic violin music or sloping off to side rooms.

“This store room must be flush against that little room next door,” whispered Dimmock, pulling back the curtain of a tiny space. “Sir, I should…” He moved a thumb back towards the door.

“Go,” Lestrade urged him. “And Dimmock, I don’t see any need to mention this to anyone, do you?” Mostly for my sake, he didn’t add. Although the thought of that Captain-Hackum Bradstreet having more fodder for his crimping was unbearable.

At least he’s happy, Lestrade reflected as his most neat and tidy, most organised, most painstaking constable sped away and he himself sneaked into the narrow cupboard filled with medicines, gallipots, phials, pieces of equipment and paraphernalia he’d rather he hadn’t known existed. Moving a box of white bridal-looking lace veils revealed a small dark place where the wood had rotted away and Lestrade could either see or hear, depending if he put his eye or ear to the patch, but not both. The room beyond was darkened, only one pale candle lit. The mysterious black figure, whatever it was, whoever it was, stood tall and insubstantial, somehow, behind a table. John sat in front of it.

As John shifted, Lestrade saw the table bore what could have been a ledger or record book of some kind. It was open, its pages gleaming grey-white. Lestrade was put in mind of another book of a similar size and thickness. Only that had been placed on a red and gold cushion, and carried in by a liveried servant: the betting book at White’s. Another memory overtook Lestrade as he crouched, cramped and cold among the stores. “Something…devilish. Macabre and unholy,” Piers had said. How had he phrased it, the rumour he’d caught about some chilling, morbid gambling? “You have to bet this thing you can’t see that something won’t happen, then if you're wrong, you pay up.”

They’d mocked then, Sherlock, especially, but now… Lestrade shivered as he contorted himself to listen, listen to an unearthly voice, more wind-whistle than human ask ‘Piers’ if he’d wager. _Don’t!_ Lestrade wanted to shout, wanted to break through the wall, but couldn’t. The scratching of a nib on paper came next, telling Lestrade ‘Piers’ had signed his name to some sort of bargain. One which occasioned a completely unexpected, less than eerie response from the black-shrouded ‘spirit’ – it laughed! Laughed, yes, but yet that somewhat more human-sounding noise chilled Lestrade’s blood. It was higher-pitched than might have been expected, and well… _insane_. Lestrade had seen madmen, in the dock or in the cells, and had taken one to the Criminally Insane wing at Bethlehem Hospital, that notorious madhouse known as Bedlam. He felt the same trickle of ice-water down his nape now.

The voice spoke again, only now its utterances seemed in less of a ghastly will-o’-the-wisp breath, and instead to hold a note of triumph. Lestrade, alone, beleaguered, wasn’t afraid to admit he was glad of it. He pressed his ear to the dusty wall as the thing instructed John. John must remain there for a while and close his eyes, the better to visualise on a non-Earthly plane what he wanted, to imagine himself the heir to the Earl of Holmes, picture himself the inheritor of the estate and wealth. Then go straight back to the studio and stay until the soiree finished.

Lestrade switched position again to get his eye to the hole, in time to see the spirit, or wraith, or…whatever walk haltingly, awkwardly across the room, his cloak flapping around his scuffed shoes, scuffed from picking their way along London streets, especially the cobbled Mews outside, Lestrade would have warranted. Spirit world be hanged. Faint noises were probably the charlatan descending the stairs to freedom. Not if Lestrade could stop him. He uncramped himself and stood, twisting and stretching, and catching the box of white lace before it spilled its contents. It was then that he jumped: the curtain to the store room was yanked back.

A handful of men stood there, the place’s patrons. The one who’d spoken to Lestrade on the step now eyed him up and down again. “And is our Little Miss Debutante ready to make her come-out now?” he enquired, waving a limp hand at the closet.

“I don’t…” Lestrade began, looking from one to another of the chits and whipsters.

“Come out to play,” explained the man, with a tilt of his head and a pucker of his lips.

A confused Lestrade shifted the box he still held and a froth of white bridal veil spilled out. A second man, this one taller and blonder and more excitable than the first, squealed. “Told you, Jemima! I said he looked all official-like! He’s here to officiate in the Marrying Room!”

“We’ve not had an ordained minister here in such ages,” lamented a third man. “Well, I might make an honest woman of my dilly boy now.”

“As if anything could do that of that ripe tartlet!” shrieked the second man. He made a grab for Lestrade’s hand. “Come on, then, Mary Minister, get into your frock and get thee to marrying.”

“Sir.” Lestrade twitched his hand away. “I’m not a man of the cloth.” He threw the box down to make his point. “I am a public officer going about my duties. I’m more disposed to have you in leg irons than leg-shackle you.”

“Oooh, sounds fun, but we’ve already got Constable Lilly Law downstairs,” dismissed the first man.

“I’m a Bow Street official?” Lestrade stood his ground.

“Show us your great big…staff, then, Agent Handsome,” suggested the second man, licking his lips.

Lestrade brandished his brass-tipped cane. “I’ve got official restraints, as well,” he warned, letting them jingle.

“Oh, be still my heart!” cried the second man, mock-swooning into the arms of the third. “They have regulation whips as well, you know!” he informed his fellows who oohed and ahhed.

The first man advanced into the cubby hole and asked, “And will you be…pumping me for information, Madam Officer?”

“I’ll clap the lot of you in lock-up is what I’ll do!” Lestrade threatened, pushing his way through the pig-widgeons to freedom. “And I’ll tell your wives you were here!” he yelled, over his shoulder as he quitted the premises. And of course, the mews was by now empty of any black-wearing figure, spectral or otherwise. Not knowing what else to do, Lestrade ran back to Bond Street, dodging the mini-cavalcade of carriages and riders setting off, and dashed up the stairs to the studio. He met Irene halfway down the flight.

“Miss Adler,” he gasped, clasping her hand. “Irene.” He stared at her pale face, and a heaviness settled in his chest, cold and hot together. “Where’s Sherlock?”

“He’s gone,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “He got caught up in it.”

“In?” He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear –

“A stupid racing wager,” she answered, her words tumbling and catching. “A curricle against a coach.”

“He doesn’t race! He hasn’t even got a carriage. Hates ’em.” It was a mistake. He could feel it, knew- “What does Sherlock know about being a Nonesuch, or whatever you call it?”

“Why, he knew enough to accept the odds, that he could tool a brace of prime bits of blood better than a pro could a four-in-hand!” haw-hawed an old cove who’d been hanging around The Woman all evening like a bothersome fly.

Lestrade was pulling Irene down the stairs as he decoded that. Sherlock, racing in one of those flimsy two-wheeled vehicles against a coach? Sherlock would be immune to all that gambling fever, all that neck-or-nothing buzzing about like a hive of bees, surely?

“He said it was all a question of science, of physics and, and geometry. That any intelligent person applying them could be better than a so-called top-sawyer,” Irene explained.

Lestrade groaned, seeing this.

“And he just insisted more when they mocked him,” she finished, grabbing his arm with both hands.

“And so some enraged Blood kindly lent him a curricle to put his money where his mouth is,” Lestrade guessed, looking wildly at the bustle on the street.

“Not a true Blood; that absurd banty rooster. Oh, you know, that one who tries to puff his chest out and strut about with the others.”

Lestrade didn’t care who. He stepped into the road to halt whatever crazed competition was going on with all these carriages and ridden horses departing.

“It’s not here, not these!” Irene divined his intent. “Greg, he’s racing the mail coach.” She barely pulled him back to the pavement, out of the path of a carriage and four. Lestrade didn’t even see it. He was lost deep in his mind’s eye, seeing the mail coach, the official conveyance of the king’s post, all black panels and red wheels and George III cypher. Saw the driver, spotted handkerchief jarring against striped waistcoat, huge whip in hand. Saw the guard –

“Which? Where?” His questions were dropped hard and flat, all wrong in this jittery, chittery throng, and he stared hard enough to turn to stone the elderly, bewhiskered fly pest who replied, “The Bath Mail.”

He saw it, saw it leave the General Post Office, call at that coffee house in Piccadilly for passengers, saw it heading for Bowford. Didn’t need the second answer, “Along Lower Heath Road.”

Because he already saw the stretch, the long, straight and wide road leading to Hampstead Heath. Saw the mail’s guard, his Post Office scarlet and gold livery, his post-horn, and his…pistols and blunderbuss, carried loaded and ready to defend the king’s mail from any threat. Such as the threat posed by highwaymen, on the Heath.

“Trigger happy, those Egg and Bacons! Shoot on sight,” chortled the persistent old geezer. “Why, young Franklyn was only playing Hunt the Squirrel behind one last week and the guard –”

But The Woman’s hanger-on never finished his anecdote about what the Royal Mail guard did when Franklyn was following hard behind the coach and passing it so closely as to brush the wheel: Lestrade punched him hard in the face, sending him reeling, bleeding and spluttering.

“Thank heavens for that! You just beat me to it,” Irene said.

Lestrade could find no humour in that, not in anything, not when Sherlock was out there in the dark, galloping along in some fragile conveyance, pitting himself against His Majesty’s seasoned retainers – and Lestrade was stuck, unable to save him. He felt sick with all the useless white-hot energy charging his body and bent over, hands on his knees to take in a calming breath.

‘“From the Corinthian Path to Putney Heath!”’ trilled a chaunter, mid-song as he drew level.

“I suggest you make off too,” warned Irene, jerking a thumb down the street to show the song-sheet seller, peddling the latest ditty, that she was serious. Lestrade straightened and stared at the aging man plying his trade, crooning a comic song about the fashionable world and how it turned and how it stopped for some. _Death at the Dogs, demise at the Club, deceased at the Gardens, far from the battlefields of Cordóba and Cádiz_ … It suddenly crystallised for Lestrade how bellicose High Society was, or rather, how aggressive those of the Bon Ton remaining behind and not away fighting made it. _From the Corinthian Path_ , or boxing, _to Putney Heath_ for duels, how violent, and how…bloodthirsty. He shook his head, fighting the vision of that blood being shed, that sacrifice being offered up to whoever or whatever, being Sherlock’s. No. He wouldn’t allow it.

“Finally, here’s my carriage. Quick, Greg.” His face must have expressed his doubts that he’d be quick to manoeuver her carriage in this crush. The Woman rolled her eyes as she used her dagger to slice through the leather leading rein tying a third, saddled horse to the matched greys in the coach’s harness. “Take it!” she urged, pushing him to it.

He understood then, and realisation dawned too as to the movement and excitement: the Quality were off on a spree, a jaunt, a jolly. Some in carriages and some, like him, on horseback; they had a race to go and see. A dangerous, stupid race in the dark along the Heath. Oh, not just spectate, but bet on too, he overheard with a sickening jolt. God, he wished he had enough time to arrest and imprison the stupidly hatted Dandy wagering on “the rider coming a cropper from his cattle and spilling claret before he can overtake the mail.” Only heard, “I say! That’s the man who stole my hat!” and thought a savage _good_ as he clattered off.

 _Fif-teen miles, anhour_ thudded through his head in tandem with the horse’s hoof beats. _Fif-teen_ – He didn’t know if he was riding that fast, the maximum speed of the mail coach, but he was overtaking other joyriders, both mounted and those whipping along in carriages, their lanterns swinging madly. Well, they didn’t have his knowledge of short cuts and side roads, either that or they feared leaving their known stamping grounds. No; wanted to take the same route as the racing vehicles, maybe, to ride behind them for a better view. Sodding Ghouls.

The wind whistled a thin whisk of accompaniment to his lonely journey, but its bite didn’t chill him, especially as he cut across and through, landing halfway along the wide stretch. And then clouds scurried from the moon, leaving it free to gleam down on him, him and the coach being pulled by four galloping horses along the Heath road. The halo lights fixed to one side of the coach confirmed its identity, if it were in any doubt. He could hear it now, the grinding of iron tyres on stone, the rhythm of sixteen pounding horseshoes and the jangle of the chains from the wheel-horses’ collars to the pole. What he couldn’t hear, as he picked his cautious way back towards the coach, was the screech of an iron brakeshoe chained under a hind wheel by the guard: it wasn’t stopping, not even for the smaller, lighter conveyance gaining on it. _Sherlock!_

He was amongst the sparse crowd now, pushing rudely, straining to see. He thought of a dozen ploys, but each might have resulted in the heavy mail coach veering off course and perhaps slamming into the frailer chaise gaining on it, on which a figure stood, not sat, as whips tended to showing off their driving skills and their perfectly matched pair of horses.

“Fair lick,” observed one Dandy or Buck or Beau or whatever the damn fool wanted to call himself. “Should double my wager.”

“Going a bit gondola-in-a-storm, though, ain’t he?” commented a second, peering.

And the curricle _was_ , jolting erratically – were the horses bolting? Was the vehicle shaking itself to bits? And Sherlock – Sherlock was slipping, wobbling, then falling to sit, managing to still grasp the reins, but lolling at an angle. His tiny, flimsy chariot was nevertheless drawing close to the mail coach, then closing on it, to whoops and cheers from those stupid, inhuman blockheads watching, because the guard was exclaiming, shouting, using his whip then raising his pistol, levelling it as the smaller conveyance drew unsteadily, dangerously level, levelling it and steadying it and –

And then the driver gave a hoarse exclamation and elbowed the guard in the stomach, making him fire wide. No not the driver, the man sitting slap bang next to him in the seat, a second driver, perhaps, as he was similarly dressed. A man who stood and launched himself from his perch, into space as the curricle passed, and whose flight knocked Sherlock from his seat, so the two made one confused trajectory flying clear of the vehicles, until they hit the ground, to roll over and over to a halt! Lestrade leapt from his borrowed horse and raced the few yards for the spot, trying to draw his pistol as he ran, yelling a warning to – “Piers?”

“Cuz!” Piers cried in Sherlock’s ear. “I was just having a coachman class when I saw you!”

It all seemed to happen at once and in separate stages but together. The two men pulled apart and heaved to their knees. The mail coach trundled on in a flurry of thuds and creaks and jingles. The curricle slowed to a stop, the horses neighing and whinnying, shaking their heads. The crowd muttering and grousing. Lestrade took a look, hard and quick but comprehensive, down at Sherlock trying to stand. Then he turned and walked back to the crowd, all his fears, all his disgust, all his anger arrowing to a fine needlepoint. He clambered awkwardly onto the roof of the nearest carriage, kicking and scraping his muddy feet deliberately when its owner protested.

“Right, you over-moneyed, under-occupied, idle-witted bastards,” he yelled, making his voice carry. It had been a while since he’d done this, but it had been drummed into him, and for that he was grateful. He took out his brass-tipped cane, letting the moonlight catch the metal, making those gathered aware of what he was. “Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!”

In the silence that followed, he shouted, “The Riot Act has been read!” When the ape-wits still gaped at him, he added, “You’ve got one hour to sod the hell off or the maximum force allowed under the law, and that’s a bastard of a lot, will be used to disperse you!” And now he leapt down, slapping horses’ flanks and carriage sides until the disbelieving, protesting crowd turned and left. At which point the fury and alarm he was a slave to, had always been a slave to where Sherlock was concerned, had him in their grip again and he turned back to the idiot, the complete, the utter –

Injured. Bleeding.

“It’s only my nose.” Sherlock held up a hand to ward Lestrade off. Lestrade hadn’t realised he’d got quite so close. He stopped and stared. Sherlock, hurt?

“My forehead, I’m afraid,” said Piers. “I’m quite hard-headed. It’s always been said.” He scratched his head as he looked for his hat, his brow furrowed and his entire mouth pursed. He looked like a puzzled monkey, but a second later was grinning like a loon, his uneven teeth proud under the wan light, as he found it and clapped it on. “Lucky I was wearing this cape. It cushioned the fall, eh?”

As did Sherlock’s thick coat, Lestrade thought, looking at the disarrayed item, the dishevelled man. He tried to speak, but Sherlock cut in, cut across Piers’s description of being so deep into his guise that he’d left the kitchen at the Polestead’s to clock on for his stint, and found himself at the GPO, so simply got on the coach and…to merely say, “I was right to avoid carriages.”


	9. Chapter Nine

“ _Sherlock._ ” It was the only utterance he could manage although there was so much to be said. So much he wanted to say. To do. Like seize that striking, arrogant face, now more beautiful in its wary uncertainty, between his two hands and – Instead Lestrade did what he so often did when one of Sherlock’s theories or experiments blew up – literally – in his face: he took care of him. Patched him up. Silently, hands shaking but no longer useless with ice-cold fear, Lestrade dabbed at the blood and righted Sherlock’s clothes for him. Sherlock smelt of strong drink. Not necessarily a bad thing: insulation, if nothing else. He looked into the younger moon-rinsed eyes close to his and words thrust free. “Sherlock. This. You, I mean. It…” _Was impossible._ And he was almost relieved at the sound of horses’ hooves and whickering.

“Piers.” Without taking his eyes from Sherlock, Lestrade acknowledged the man who’d retrieved the still whinnying horses and their worse for wear carriage.

“Look, cuz! These have been paddywhacked.”

“Dosed?” Lestrade was aghast, but one glance at the harrumphing, sweating, spittle-flecked nags told him it was true.

“Who’d do that to prime steppers like these?” Piers was near to tears as he stroked the horses’ necks.

“The same person who did it to me,” came in Sherlock’s smooth baritone, bringing Lestrade’s wide-eyed, openmouthed gaze back to him. “Didn’t you think so? Wasn’t that why you were examining my pupils just now? I imagine they’re mere pin-pricks.” As Lestrade continued to stare, nonplussed, Sherlock bent to examine the curricle flooring. Moonlight grazed off the small shards of glass his careful finger stirred.

“A miniscule ampoule. Or ampoules, probably. Fixed to the floor.” Sherlock straightened.

“At least you didn’t get given it the same way the cattle did!”

It took a moment for Lestrade to follow Piers’s impassioned outburst, delivered from the back of the horses. His, “Could you help me clean out their back passages?” clarified any doubt Lestrade might have had.

“And you stepped on the containers? Crushed them? You didn’t see them?” Lestrade asked Sherlock on a hard bite.

“I, not notice? I not” He stopped at the look on Lestrade’s face, at the swift intent in Lestrade’s posture, but couldn’t avoid the hard, ringing slap Lestrade landed on his face, stinging right across one cheek. “Ohhh!” came in a tone hard to place, a mix of indignation, incredulity and… the merest hint of speculation. Sherlock rubbed his cheek, staring at his attacker.

All the questions, the accusations Lestrade wanted to shout jammed in his throat, and he gulped down air before turning away.

“Why can’t you use your handkerchief?” Sherlock asked Piers after a while.

“I’ve wiped off their foam. From their noses. Very carefully, see? So you can test to know what the potion was,” Piers answered, surprising Lestrade, and Sherlock too. “I just can’t understand who,” he continued.

“As I said, cousin –”

No, I know.” Piers cut off Sherlock’s sighed-out words. He scrunched his brow and scratched at his short hair, his teeth seeming to protrude more as he puzzled. “I mean whose this rig is. Black bodywork and carriage, including springs, axles, and perch? Black pole and wheels? No family in the Ton has that equipage. They have their own combinations of body and wheels colours. Some of them completely loblolly. Why, the Pagets… Well. Not now. Later. And the steeds…”

“Pale horse,” Lestrade muttered, recalling earlier.

“Pale? You mean white? No. Not white. It’s rare to see a white horse, y’know. No; cremello, these nags.” Piers bent a little to blow softly up one pair of equine nostrils while the other horse’s head draped itself over Piers’s shoulder. “Whose are you, young feller?”

“Doesn’t matter whose they were. Nor the curricle. Not when they’re yours now,” announced Lestrade, his mind’s eye flaring to life anew with the nightmare picture of the flimsy conveyance racing out of control and Piers’s stolid weigh bearing Sherlock to safety.

“I, I beg yours, sir?” Piers tried, his face flushed and his jaw dropping.

“These are a seized weapon from a criminal. And so forfeit. And given as a recompense to someone who endangered his own life preventing said crime. Least we can do.” Lestrade improvised.

“Oh, sir, oh Sher,” was all Piers could utter before he fell to hugging the beasts and kissing them. Lestrade had to look away when tongues came out.

“Their previous owner won’t be needing them, not where he’s going. Whoever he is,” Lestrade determined, looking oh so forward to getting his hands on the murdering bastard. He turned at the clatter of a carriage approaching fast. The Woman’s. Of course. “Who?” he demanded suddenly, wanting to startle Sherlock into an honest, unguarded answer. And when it came, the big reveal startled Lestrade just as much.

“That beaux-nasty broganier!”

“Not that frightful little beyond-the-pale toadeater!” Piers exclaimed.

It took Lestrade a second to attach their privileged, dismissive descriptions to a face, a person, to get a picture. “Him? Little Mr Pigwidgeon?” An incredulous Lestrade held out a hand in an unflattering approximation of the short, slim man’s height. He paused, really seeing the man past his strutting and cheeping to get into the inner circle. No; he was no vacuous wouldst-be, not with that coiled-spring tension, those nearly black eyes enormous with intent and then hooded and guarded with purpose as he was here, there and everywhere, coaxing hither, daring thither, whipping up a scene or situation all over. And now Lestrade knew what that roll of the man’s head as he’d stared at Sherlock had reminded him of: a snake studying its prey before striking. And the chill that blew through Lestrade now was much greater than the premonition he’d felt a hint of earlier.

“But...you mean all that fawning and scraping and dancing attendance was a blind? Well, no matter; whoever or whatever he was, I’ll see him dance all right.” _At the end of a rope._ “And his accompl –”  Lestrade stopped. No; that wasn’t right. Despite the Jack Sprat and the taller and broader black-clad figure, this had been no standard bulk and file operation. Not even a reverse bulk and file: it was usually the bulkier man who jostled the victim and the smaller file who did the business. Because that spectral appearance’s breadth had been the result of padded clothes and the height had been achieved by built-up shoes, the cause of the Minchin cove’s unsteady gait. “Him, a bully trap,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“Not exactly.” Sherlock finished dabbing at his nose with his hanky. Correction: Lestrade’s hanky. “Well, yes; he does have the mild and effeminate appearance – and the proclivities – but it’s not that he’s deceptively brave. More daring. Audacious, even.” He moved back for the oncoming carriage.

“And I don’t even know his name, the bastard little Erseman,” Lestrade almost spat.

“The Earl of Erehwon!” cried John, who happened to be driving La Adler’s coach. He barely waited until it stilled before jumping down, stumbling on the uneven ground. Sherlock righted him and Piers tied off the horses’ reins and steadied them. “It must be him! He’s vanished! He wasn’t amongst the spectators here and he wasn’t there at the party when I was having my meeting with that, that thing.”

“Wait.” Sherlock grabbed at John and held a hand over his mouth to silence him. Lestrade watched those long, deceptively fine-boned fingers and recalled them held over his own mouth, but in other circumstances, to muffle whatever cries and moans Lestrade might loose. He gulped. Not the time. Not the place. Hope both things would collide again one day.

“Say that again,” Sherlock ordered John, removing his hand.

“He’s fled and we –”

“The name!” barked Sherlock.

“The Earl of Erehwon?” John blinked and looked at Lestrade, who shrugged. John licked his lips. “We’ll have to look him up, see who his family is…”

“The way you pronounce it,” Sherlock breathed. “Well, mangle it, rather. Irene!”

His command had her exiting the coach, still settling her clothes and hair, and her raised eyebrow had John springing to her aid. She pouted. Hadn’t been his arm she wanted.

“Again, John. The last word only. Exactly as you said it, like an Englishman, with no attempt at Emerald Isle brogue.”

A bewildered John obediently repeated the word, exactly as it might be written.

“Irene. You enjoy playing games, making puzzles of names.” Sherlock pinned her in his stare. “What does that sugg –”

“Nowhere,” came her immediate response, accompanied by her twirling-finger gesture as she rearranged the letters.

“Everywhere and nowhere, that charlatan,” capped Lestrade

“Wait; let me see if I haven’t got a spatchcock for a goose on this,” Piers demanded.

“As if we have time for that!” retorted Sherlock.

“Oi! Your cousin risked his neck to save your bacon!” Lestrade reminded the ungrateful wretch. “He’s in this just as much as we are. The least you can do is paint him the full picture. And you should be rewarding him.”

“Oh, cuz! Don’t say these are mine too!” Piers exclaimed, patting The Woman’s coach and twinned greys, tears in his eyes.

“He isn’t. Because they’re not,” she informed him, slapping his hands away. “And I think you’d better drop the bag of moonshine and tell me the truth too, all of you.”

“The official cover story was for your own safety, ma’am,” John tried, quelled by her glare.

“Do I look like the Infanta? No? Then stop giving me Spanish coin, you sapskulls!” she shouted, violently shaking the nearest thing to her, which happened to be Piers. “I’m not some tender parnell, fearful of the least puff of wind or drop of rain!”

They had no choice but to explain the true state of affairs, catching Sherlock and Piers up on John’s meeting.

“So this Teaguelander, who must have been present at each death,operates by goading the victim into a dangerous wager, like this race, for instance,” she said, “and drugs him so he can’t win anyway…”

 _Oh. Yes._ Lestrade supposed the other victims must have been drugged.

“Or plain disposes of them at some fashionable event they were provoked into attending. And this is seen as part and pack of this new frenetic, risk-taking spirit of the age we keep hearing about,” she continued.

“Well, yes, there’s a lot unrest brought about the war,” said their own brother of the blade, John. “Not just the insecurity and depression a prolonged conflict brings to a society, or the military themselves unsettled by the contrast between campaigning and inactivity and so risk-seeking even off the field…”

That would all be in his next chronicle, Lestrade surmised.

“Oh, don’t forget survivor’s guilt.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “And you might as well stir all the upheavals in society caused by the newly minted living or marrying or winning estates above their station into the pot you’re cooking. Oh, who bloody cares what pegs he hangs his cloak on?”

“What’s in it for him, Sherlock?” Lestrade asked quietly, shaking free of the memory of those watchful black eyes, those reptilian black eyes.

“It’s connected to that death book. The wagers. Gambling that a person wouldn’t survive,” Sherlock replied, just as quietly.

“So he’s in league with _death_?” Piers tried not to clutch his horses’ manes tighter.

“He said something about _being_ death, if I understood. In that room.” John screwed up his face, making his nose crinkle. “Yes: said to look upon him as Mortis Art.”

“The art of death,” Piers translated, looking more surprised than any of them.

“Perhaps you mightn’t fail _all_ your Finals, you know,” Sherlock ventured.

“Oh, well, not the one I sat, p’raps,” Piers reflected. “Didn’t twig there were more, over three days, y’know? I can always have another bash. And next time that’s two less.”

Lestrade really hoped Mathematics wasn’t part of the hapless man’s studies. His mind stuck on that death book, that reckoning ledger, whatever it was. “If only we had that tome,” he lamented. “Just to see. We need –”

“Someone who can read quickly upside down and at a distance?” John enquired.

“You –”

“I saw all the names, all the victims,” John cut across Lestrade’s attempt at a question. Sherlock was nodding, his eyes sparking, so Lestrade reckoned it was true. “And who made the wagers.”

“Or…paid for the service of an assassin,” Lestrade whispered, building the blocks together. “Because that’s what it is. Betting against the person dying and then paying your debt when they die: it's not a macabre game or a morbid craze, is it. Writing a wager in some sort of death book, ledger, what have you – it’s just signing the victim’s death warrant. And then you have to pay the gallowglass. The killer.”

“I made a note of them. While it was still fresh,” John continued. Lestrade had to turn away at that. Despite the utter horror of the situation, he had to avoid Sherlock’s eye, Sherlock who was reminding him John had had such a lot of practice writing down his impressions of an evening’s events. They could only hope this was unvarnished.

“Oh no, he legged it straight away,” John was saying. Lestrade had missed a question. “He was determined to see to you, Sherlock. Took a delight in your imminent demise, after you’d dismissed him in such no uncertain and loud terms as a half-flash and half-foolish little nobody.”

“You shouldn’t have been so rude, Viscount.” Irene gifted him an impish grin “I’m always telling you. Oh, no – let me see if I have it without a wrinkle: you were merely provoking him to unmask him, suspecting him as you did, and using yourself as live bait? That must be it.” Lestrade had no matching grin for her. This wasn’t a joke. Hadn’t been, not that heart-stopping nightmare hurtle through the dark, that –

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered, his gaze as always drawn to Sherlock.

“Or shouldn’t turned him down when he slipped his card and informed me I didn’t have to make do with my intellectual and social inferiors?” Sherlock questioned, his eyes on Lestrade, his voice low and not carrying over the group’s sniggers. “Which was when I also put him in his place. With extreme force.” His lips hitched up in a semi-smile at the echo of Lestrade’s words of earlier, when he’d dismissed the Quality. Although not even the strayest ghost of a smile played across Lestrade’s lips, the moment stretched and enveloped the two of them, intimate and warm despite the chill and the wan cast of the moon. But it had to break. “He’s a very sore loser, Erehwon,” Sherlock finished.

“Well, New Hero,” said Irene after a pause, slanting her eyes at Lestrade. “Where now?”

Nobody mentioned that that last anagram…wasn’t quite true.

“I guess we – I – should check out those who hired the service.” Lestrade tapped his pocket containing John’s list. “See if we can get a confession.”

“Wouldn’t you be better catching them red-handed _paying_ for the service?” Irene queried.

“Well, ideally, yeah,” Lestrade replied, breaking off to ready himself as a horse thundered up, its rider view hallooing a, “Yoo hoo!”

“Mrs Hudson?” gasped John.

“Riding side-saddle…without a saddle?” Irene questioned.

“And stopping on a sixpence!” Piers whistled in approved as he caught the horse’s mane.

The elderly lady stared at the moon-struck faces. “I wasn’t always just a housekeeper, dear. Why, once, in the rodeo in Florida, I – Well.” She waved a hand.

“News? From your network?” Sherlock almost toppled her to the ground in his eagerness as he helped her dismount.

“Yes! Molly came up trumps. Got a message to me through that street boy you had shadowing her. Said the countess sent all the servants out for the evening!”

“ _What?_ Then it’s tonight!” Sherlock’s statement cut across Mrs H’s babble about the private supper box arranged for them at the Variety Show to cheer them all up and express her thanks for their support during this –

“Sold her jewels for ready cash, arranged to get the house to herself and that villain’s nowhere to be found –” Lestrade slapped his own head at his unwitting bloomer. “I’d say yeah, it’s tonight.”

“Or, more precisely” – Sherlock swung up onto the horse before Lestrade could grab him – “NOW!” The last word was shouted and coincided with him pressing his heels hard into the beast’s flanks. It reared and bucked, then threw itself forward, leaving them all to the dust of the empty moonlight.

“ _Rude,_ ” commented Irene.

“Cuz?” wobbled Piers, pointing. “Cousin Sherlock, trick-riding with no saddle and bridle?”

“Oh, he learned it and had to do it all the time when he was in Astley’s Circus for the – Oh, I’ve said too much. I promised…” Mrs Hudson nevertheless patted the gaping-mouthed youth. Lestrade felt his own eyes popping, particularly when her face fell a second later. “Oooh, I do hope he remembers how. You know how he tends to forget things, when he no longer cares about them.”

“Lestrade?” John said, touching a hand to his arm as he stood stock-still, shocked, staring into the distance.

“He…he,” was all he could make emerge. _Didn’t. Wouldn’t. Put himself wilfully into danger – again – before an evil monster who’d bested him once?_ Leaving Lestrade behind – again – to panic and lament and maybe…mourn? No. No way. No way in Holy Hades was the stupid, idiotic bastard getting away with –

“John.” Again, the only word he could grind out. And John understood, comprehended, maybe not all, but enough that he elbowed Piers into untying the knotted reins of Lestrade’s borrowed horse from the branch he’d secured them to and thrusting them into Lestrade’s hands. John cupped _his_ hands to give Lestrade a step up, to mount quicker, and Piers slapped the horse’s side, yelling out a, “Yah!” to speed him away.

Speed him like the devil was after him, or he was chasing a phantom, or preventing a meeting with a demon from Hell. “Sherlock!” he yelled into the night, into the uncaring wind. “Sherlock!” Fleeing, chasing, hunting? Lestrade didn’t know, didn’t care, could barely think during his desperate star-lit flight back whence he’d come, and farther, on to Mayfair, and its largest square, Grosvenor, where stood Polstead House, that large, symmetrical five-story, five-bayed mansion. It…looked quiet. Normal. Nothing marred the peace of the garden enclosure. He couldn’t…exactly knock on the door and demand to know if the lady of the house was paying off a mercenary, or a blackmailer, now, could he. Couldn’t see –

The roof! What – He couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t figure out what the moving shadows were, not from there, so he dismounted, racing along the street to the mews behind, cursing as he hurtled that riding would have been quicker. He threw his shoulder against the mews’ wooden door, falling in when it yielded. Strange – unlatched, yet no one there. Only the whickering, head-tossing horses. It took him a moment inside the yard to find something to stand on to reach some lead piping or other and haul himself up onto a guttering, to climb to a parapet. He didn’t like heights overmuch, found himself crouched, then crawling to the main roof of the mansion proper. It was mercifully flat on top, in the middle of a chimney-dotted mass of eaves and corners.

And deserted. He thought he should have felt foolish, lying flat just inside the edge, hopefully hidden by its dark pool of shade, alone in the chill of the wind, high under the thin flat dark of the sky, his breath hitching and catching and his heart banging about like a door in a gale. But he didn’t feel as if he’d been alarmist. He felt _scared_. All alone and – _Oh no he wasn’t._

A small square window set in a triangle of jutting roof over the way squealed open, the screech jarring. The person pushing it must have thought so – it tutted as it emerged, a tall, wraithlike black figure. But ghosts, phantoms, whatever they were, didn’t remonstrate and didn’t clamber quite so awkwardly. Well maybe they did, if they were hefting a huge sack and wearing built-up shoes and padded clothes! Free of the window and standing on the roof, the man halted, poised still as if scenting the air, scouting for danger.

Maybe Lestrade made a noise, or perhaps his shadow wavered, twisting a thicker black spill, but something made the assassin begin to head _that_ way.

“Erehwon!” cried a voice, and Sherlock’s tall, slim figure unfolded itself from behind a large chimney pot to confront him, his readiness writ large.

“ _No!_ ” The small figure jumped up and down, his overlarge padded cloak falling free. He abandoned it to run over to what looked like huge doll’s house bit stuck on the roof’s right hand corner. It was a nothing more than a square wall, mostly window, with an overhanging triangular roof, maybe an attic. The man ran up the slant of the wall to its side, using it as an angled runway, and launched himself off into nothingness!

Only, not quite. He flew through the air all right, across the space between Polstead House and its neighbour, to catch onto a rope mesh, a swath of huge help squares strung over to hang down from the parapet of the house next door. He scrambled up and over, onto that roof, where he stopped, to throw threw a triumphant look across the way, smirking and shaking his head in mock pity as Sherlock turned and walked away a few paces.

“ _No!_ ” Lestrade yelled, trying to put his entire soul, his whole being into the command. Trying to force both men not, to not –

“Erehwon!” cried Sherlock again as he emulated the man’s leap, his a leap of faith, a leap into the abyss – the villain had used Sherlock’s precious few seconds of preparation time to pull the rope mesh…free. Sherlock’s fingers grabbed at the edge of the guttering, the narrow, thin, flimsy strip…

“ _No!_ ” the villain imitated Lestrade’s cry, all pop eyes and open mouth as he glanced across and down at them both. “Oh.” He shrugged. “And it’s James Moriarty. Hi!”

“ _Moriarty?_ ” Sherlock managed to gasp. “That’s not _Mortis Art_ , you fool. That would be _Airy Mort_ , you moronic idiot!”

“Erm, _I’m_ not the idiot,” the figure asserted, leaning down to smirk, and Sherlock raised a hand, raised it high as he cried, “Oh no?” and knocked the sack from his opponent’s hand. The sack’s heaviness didn’t allow it to fly free, or arc wide. It dropped, a dead weight.

“I beg to differ,” Sherlock managed, sneering up. He tensed, as did Lestrade, when the little man, Moriarty, raised a foot and held it ready, preparing to stamp down on Sherlock’s clutching fingers. It was one of those moments, those awful, acid moments of paralysing cold and heavy numbness and time freezing along with the blood in your veins and the marrow in your bones. There’d been a fair few of those, with Sherlock, and as always, when in a state of Sherlock-induced shock, Lestrade’s Bow St training took him over. He couldn’t risk shooting, not with the monster now dropped down low, close to Sherlock and making a sick dumb show of peeling Sherlock’s gripping fingers loose one by one.

Instead Lestrade grabbed his whistle and blew three short blasts on it. then again, then cried, “Oi you, whatever your name is, public officers have this building surrounded!” He dashed over to the ledge and signalled to the square below. “Men, move in! Ascend to the roof!” He sketched a wide wave with his arm. “Mounted patrol, cordon off the square! No one to pass.” He would have said anything, he knew, as he sounded three more short, sharp whistle blasts. Could have been saying anything. reciting the Lord’s Prayer, for all he knew.

Moriarty straightened and shrugged, righting his clothes. “Catch you later,” he threw over his shoulder as he sauntered away. Well, dawdled for the length of the rooftop, then Lestrade heard a hasty scramble through a window. He wished so hard he really did have an army of officers waiting below to catch the bastard. But all there was was him. Him and Sherlock. Sherlock, clinging on, tiring, his fingers slipping…

Lestrade’s frantic search unearthed a plank of wood, luckily longer than the gap between the houses and he set it to bridge that gap, not looking down as he lay flat on his belly and inched along, dragging himself, now feeling the wind and the chill. Sherlock said nothing, merely raised his head to regard him, his entire body shaking with the effort of holding on. Within a minute Lestrade was across and racing himself to haul Sherlock up and over, safe at last.

“Come on!” Sherlock cried, getting up shakily from his knees. “He’s getting away! Lestrade…what…”

Was he doing? He didn’t rightly know. His hands seems to be acting without consulting his brain. But maybe they were answering the need of his heart. No, his _soul_ , he thought grimly as he clapped the still-disorientated Sherlock in handcuffs. His soul was screaming for satisfaction, just as his blood was beating furiously with a bone-deep need to be acknowledged.

“No. The question’s _how_ ,” he informed a confused Sherlock. “As in, _how could you?_ How could you be so stupid, so careless as to race off like that, not once, but twice? How could you put yourself in such danger like that, put your _life_ at risk, Sherlock?” The last word came out on a shout, and Sherlock tried not to flinch from the white-hot fury. “Do you know what it’s like?” Lestrade continued. “You don’t, do you. Don’t know how much it hurts. Well, it hurts like _this_.”

And again, without his orders, his body acted, his leg sticking out to topple Sherlock facedown, and his body sinking to sit to cushion his fall and catch him. And not only that. To castigate him. Lestrade only really understood what he intended when he found himself sitting, his back against a chimney pot and Sherlock across his lap, struggling to get free, struggling more, twisting and turning as Lestrade jabbed a hand under him to loosen his breeches and yank them down with a fierce _riiipppp_. When they were pulled firmly down enough, Lestrade threw a leg over both of Sherlock’s, imprisoning them and immobilising him. Funny, their close entwining was a gross parody of more intimate embraces they’d shared. Especially with Sherlock divested of greatcoat and waistcoat – he’d removed them to assess the damage after the carriage debacle – and dressed only in the fancy, frothy, frilly shirt that befitted his station, Well, no matter, not with Lestrade’s hands free to twitch up those acres of lace and linen and expose Sherlock’s perfect arse. His naked, defenceless flesh. At Lestrade’s mercy. His for the -

“No. No!” Sherlock cried. Funny, him knowing what Lestrade was about when had anyone been there to ask Lestrade what he was going to do, _he_ wouldn’t have known. Well, not for a few white-hot, yet frozen, seconds, until he began doing it. Until his hand lifted and whacked down. Hard and loud. Landing hard enough to hurt Lestrade and ringing loud enough to sting his ears. It wasn’t a slap. Not a smack, even. _A spank. A spanking._ He understood that, although he’d never delivered one before, not even as part of a tryst. They didn’t… But he was now, pouring all his force and his fears and feelings and forlorn, forsaken future into the blows.

“Too far!” Lestrade ground out in time with a whack. “Too often!” And another. “Without me!” Next wallop. “Left me!” Thrash. He ignored his victim’s gasps and cries, easily subdued his wriggles and shakes. It wasn’t so easy to ignore the singing in his blood at the feel of that squirming, writhing body over his knee, at his mercy, or the sensation of ripe flesh, usually marble taut, being heated to quivering life by the frenzy of his hand. No; his only regret was being unable to see the shades and hues he was painting that perfect cream canvas, the thin light his enemy here.

“Think you’re invincible! Untouchable!” He paused: the word unlovable seemed to hover and clamour in the midst of the fleshy, meaty smacks which accompanied each adjective. “Immortal. Well, you’re not. You’re human. Mortal. And you could have been killed. And I could have lost you!” It was only as the echo of that last extra-hard strike on _lost_ dissipated into the uncaring dawn that Lestrade understood. He couldn’t lose Sherlock. For that to happen, he would have had to had him. And that was something he could never, would never be able to, lay claim to. But there was one thing he could do, could say. His last, all or nothing, all for nothing strike, girding his weary, bruised heart and soul and spirit and flesh into one last pitch and toss of now-realised truth: “And it would have ripped the heart and soul out of me. Because I _love_ you, you _bastard_.”

And with that confession, that good-bye he stopped, his hand halted on the swollen sphere of flesh he’d just abused. His hand lying on it was probably aggravating the heat and swelling, the heat and swelling his hand had caused. He wanted to freeze into a perfect statue-like state as Sherlock had, stiff and shaming dead beneath his hand, but forced himself to shake out Sherlock’s shirt, to pull it into place and cover the shame. Love. It was, that fierce, bright mixture of wanting and delighting in and pride in and caring for and fearing for and protecting and…so many others. It was; he now knew it was. Now when it was too -

“Ummphh?” That noise was him, just as the dull thud was him; his head whacking on the stone chimney pot behind him. The noise was cut off and he couldn’t even raise a cry at the pain, not with Sherlock, up and round in one heartbeat, throwing himself onto Lestrade! Not just his upper body weight and his arms pinning him, although that was there, but his face, hard against Lestrade’s…

“You – What? What did you say? You said…you”

“Love you. Yeah.” Sherlock looked so young, too young, vulnerable, hurt, his paleness gleaming in the moonlight and his eyes large and tear drenched. Lestrade had no hesitation. Although he had to shift a little; despite the situation, he was rock hard. “I have for so long. Probably from the minute I saw you.”

“But w –”

“Don’t you _dare_ , Sherlock. Don’t you sodding dare ask me why!” His voice cracked, neither shout nor cry. “Because it would take too long to answer, and I can’t think right now, not with you right there, with those beautiful eyes fixed on me, all silver with the moon and blue with the dawn. And with your mouth, great Christ, your mouth, Sherlock, so close, a taunt and a tease, and a pout and a promise and… Well? Aren’t you going to say anything? You always have so much to say for yourself. What have you got to s – Errrp!”

The hard thud booming out again was Lestrade’s head being knocking into the stone chimney at his back, again. And that, and the undignified, animalistic noise he’d just emitted were caused by the same action: Sherlock kissing him.


	10. Chapter Ten

Before Lestrade could speak, could _breathe_ , Sherlock, who’d freed himself of cuffs as per usual, stabbed his fingers into Lestrade’s short hair, gripping tightly, and crushed himself to Lestrade’s chest, then, well, fell upon him as if he were starving. There was no practiced seduction, no finesse, just Sherlock forcing a shocked Lestrade’s lips apart so his tongue could thrust into his mouth and explore with a boldness that shocked and aroused Lestrade. Helpless, powerless, all Lestrade could do was let him. Oh, and hold on. To Sherlock’s arse, as it happened, still heated and still quite perfect under his questing fingers. He clung with frank possessiveness, but that was fine, more than fine, wonderful really, what with Sherlock coming up for air, but not to launch into a tirade or a lecture. No; instead he sucked on Lestrade’s lips until they both stung with mingled pleasure and pain.

Reading my bloody mind! Lestrade managed to think, wondering how often he’d wanted to do just that to that sculpted yet pulsating-with-life Cupid’s bow that was Sherlock’s mouth. Then his attempts at counting, at recollection, at even thinking stopped and he let Sherlock, as ever, astound him. His helplessness seemed to fuel Sherlock even more: it seemed pleasuring Lestrade, dragging guttural moans from deep in his throat were the greatest of aphrodisiacs for him. Because he kissed on. And on and on as though he never intended to stop. And then wriggled, making Lestrade’s hands contract on his pert little arse. Daring, fearful, not knowing if he’d understood, Lestrade raised a tentative hand, to drop it in a tap. A love tap, he belatedly realised through his daze, closing his eyes against the moan his action elicited from Sherlock. He did it again, letting loose a volley of soft spanks on those fleshly buttocks, still bare of breeches, rippling the ocean of lace, rubbing and squeezing between each slap. When he opened his eyes, Sherlock’s were on his, huge and filled with something that looked akin to…wonder.

So Lestrade clarified things for him by taking over the kissing, taking the lead, tasting and touching, trying and teasing to his heart’s content. He had to learn too. Needed to. Just as Sherlock needed, meaning he needed, the swat of Lestrade’s hand on his behind, that soft, rhythmic volley of gentle smacks and strokes, touches and tickles.

Lestrade shifted again, pressing every inch of the long, hard bulge of his cock into Sherlock and feeling the answering call of Sherlock’s own body, rigid with desire, with promise. His shuffle dislodged the human limped clutched fast to him, and although Lestrade felt the loss with an acute pang, he knew they needed to come for air, for one thing. To speak, for another.

“Drowning here!” he gasped. “Drowning you. In kisses.” And love taps, he didn’t add, confident Sherlock heard it anyway.

“About time,” came a familiar voice from the attic window.

“John?” Lestrade gasped, peering at the stocky blond figure emerging. “I… What?”

“I said about time. That you realised how you felt. What those sensations are. What they mean, you idiot.” He stalked forward, explaining, “I’m not talking to you.”

“Me?” Sherlock cried, all indignation as he tried to stand, failed, and compromised by sitting. Lestrade’s heart jolted at the wince Sherlock gave and the sly look he shot Lestrade from under his long, curled lashes. He anchored Sherlock to him with a firm arm, covering him and fastening him.

“Yes you, Viscount I know Everything Except What’s Important.”

“Oh!” Sherlock protested, making his full lips pout into the most kissable, lickable heart shape imaginable.

“All right. What do you think it means, genius, that your eyes dilate and your pulse races when Lestrade’s around, hmm? And remember, I’m a doctor.”

“What, that? Well, usually the result of an experiment. Chemical, drugs, potions, reactions, and so on.” Sherlock nodded.

“And that your eyes are always on him, and you worry when he’s put on a case, or in case he meets someone else, at work, or out?”

“Never happen,” Lestrade assured Sherlock, glaring at John.

“And that you’re always looking out for ways big and small to take care of him, make him content, make his life easier? Some of them, by the way, extremely big – life changing, one could say?”

Sherlock said nothing. Was probably cataloguing the incidents. Incidents that had Lestrade...curious.

“And what do you think that feeling, that aching, churning, burning acid in your stomach and chest was when Irene Adler met Lestrade and fell hard for him? Yeah? What made you do...all the things you did and still do about that, eh?”

Lestrade’s attempt at a, “ _What?_ ” went unheard, drowned under Sherlock’s, “Oh, but – _oh._ No – _oh_. Oh? Ohhhhhhhh…” With the last sound not a word but a range of emotions Lestrade couldn’t even begin to identify. No need, because the best guide was the look on Sherlock’s face as he moved his gaze from John to Lestrade, a look Lestrade could only describe as a blooming. A dawning. An awakening. And glorious to behold, but more glorious still to have occasioned, that shared promise of a new beginning. A rebirth. Together.

“He’s telling the truth, sweetling,” Lestrade murmured, his voice choking on the endearment he’d hoarded away, only for thinking, in private.

‘“For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction,’” whispered Sherlock, just having to go one better, of course, drawing a somewhat shaky hand down Lestrade’s face. It made Lestrade forsake his usual cursing of the poet’s name whenever he was mentioned or quoted, to instead close his eyes in bliss and lean into that tentative but determined touch tracing his features and rubbing across his stubble. The words, “I…knew, of course,” delivered in those oh so upper crust tones had him opening his eyes to stare at Sherlock.

“By science? I don’t think there’s a science of love, sweetness,” Lestrade said, paying out another of the love names he’d stored.

“Instinct,” Sherlock rallied.

‘“There is no instinct like that of the heart,”’ Lestrade agreed, watching a sweet smile take over Sherlock’s face. “Bless Byron,” Lestrade added, stroking a gentle questing finger down his love’s face, outlining those lips he adored and could spend the rest of his life kissing to a plump, bawdy ripeness. He almost jumped when Sherlock moved to take the tip of Lestrade’s finger between his lips and nipped gently. “Imp,” he chided. “Rascal.” Seemed he could spend the rest of his days calling Sherlock nicknames too. Oh wait, he already knew that. He grinned. “Naughty puppies that nip get a little smack, you know. Or…did you know that? Know and want –”

“Ahemm!” John must have learnt that fake cough from Mrs Hudson. “So…it’s all solved, then?”

“Yes. Moriarty – the title Earl of Erehwon’s a fake, obviously – persuades people to pay him to off someone, laying it out as a game, a bamboozle. Then the payment for his service, something he collects once that person has ascended to the position and wealth to which he or she aspired, becomes in effect blackmail. An income for life,” Sherlock announced in a rapid-fire hail, adding, “ _What?_ ” as the other two looked at him.

“Nothing. But as soon as we’ve got this case wrapped up…” Lestrade let the heated intent in his eyes speak for him, and Sherlock, what? _blushed?_ “We’d better get word out for him,” he concluded.

“Who? That innocuous-looking petit-maître by day or the mysterious shrouded figure by night? Who knows who he _really_ is,” Sherlock scoffed.

“We’ll get him.” Lestrade was quietly confident. “Soon as he comes for that sack of readies that fell onto the ledge down there…” He indicated. “He won’t want to be bested. He’ll be back.”

“So you two are finally going to make love.”

Sherlock stared across at John. “I hate to batter your…ears, but we do already…share a bed.”

“Oh yes. I’m sure. Sure that you tryst. You tumble. You tup. You fuck. You rub and tug when one of you’s got a cockstand and –”

“Oi, steady on,” Lestrade cautioned, his brows lowered.

“But you don’t make love. You don’t bathe the other, gently soothing away the weariness of a long day. You don’t feed the other from your own lips, tempting and teasing with tiny, tasty tidbits and inflaming and… Hell, sometimes I just want to push you both into a bath or, or tie you to the bed myself, just to –” John swallowed and passed a hand over his face as they stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at him. “That…didn’t come out as I intended.”

“Didn’t it?” queried Sherlock, turning an indignant face to Lestrade a second later in response to the heavy elbow in his ribs.

“No… I have to go. I have to write up…the case. For my…records. Yes…while still vivid.” John stumbled through the window and was gone, leaving them still speechless under the stars.

“I imagine it’ll be _extremely_ vivid,” Lestrade commented eventually. “What d’you reckon, gone to pour out – sorry – some prosy romance, all mistaken identities at candlelit county house masquerades?”

“More…raunchy romance, all ripped ruffles and besmirched breeches, I think,” Sherlock surmised. “But in point of fact, the good doctor is currently hard at work on a penny shocker featuring a rugged Bow Street Runner, all pistols and stallion, chasing an international criminal known as _Le Fantôme_ through London’s high society while an entire finishing school of debutantes and a whole chorus of actresses –” He was cut off by Lestrade’s horrified groan.

“Yeah, well, you can read it to me. In bed. _Our_ bed, soon’s we get sorted out which room we’ll be sharing from now on in,” he added firmly. You had to spell things out with Sherlock, Sherlock…whose eyes were alive with a speculative gleam, no doubt imagining what the soon-to-be spare room could be used for. “Because that’s how it’s gonna be. From now on in. Now we’re together.”

“I…hope so,” came quietly as Sherlock was helped in through the window to the dusty attic.

“I damn well know so, sweetheart. So, _our_ house. Where I’ll be enjoying a long hot soak in the tub. Being bathed and cosseted, long overdue, after all you’ve put me through over the years.” Lestrade grinned and clasped an indignantly protesting Sherlock to him. “And all you’ll be subjecting me to for the years to come. If I know you. And if I’m very, very lucky.” The sight of the tables and shelves of ornaments and arty-farty bits and bobs as they walked along the deserted hall made Lestrade huff out a laugh. “And tell you what, make a good job of the petting and I’ll even let you sniff snuff off my sternum.”

“What.” Sherlock came to a halt and stared at him. “ _What?_ ”

“Or collar bone. What do I know. Like your cock-robin in that high-toned shop.” Lestrade had stopped too.

“Julio? I can assure you I’ve never ruffled that pullet’s feathers.”

“Oh no? He seemed familiar enough with you.” He hadn’t actually been aware of how much that, the pretty young _poule_ , had stung and goaded him.

“Julio is a useful member of my network, yes, one happy to crow and chirp his latest news from the top of the coop if taken out to an exclusive restaurant or entertainment, where he can…make future contacts. He does have rather an eye for luxury and being well-kept. He’s a smart enough cove. And sternum? Scapular? It’s sniffed off the shoulder, you lewd!”

“Ah. Right,” said Lestrade in the face of Sherlock’s snorts of laughter. That…did make more sense. He breathed more easily out in the open air of the street, the relatively quiet London square.

“Is…that what you thought? About me? That I…” Sherlock, that well-known foreman of the jury, seemed lost for words.

“Here. Make yourself useful.” Lestrade indicated the locked gate to the square’s central garden. “I know you’ve my skeleton key about you, seeing as I can’t find it. Again,” he murmured, waiting for a somewhat surprised Sherlock to do as bade. “Here. Not quite Vauxhall, but…” The bench in the secluded nook was fine. He tried to encourage Sherlock to lean back, to lean into him but Sherlock…didn’t really understand spooning and cooing. He will, Lestrade vowed, letting him sit on one stone arm, his feet on the bench, so he could face Lestrade. Sherlock, his fingers steepled under his chin, regarded Lestrade.

“To answer you, yes. Well, not so much thought as feared. I’m not afraid to confess I was jealous. I often am, seeing you out and about with your, well, other people. There. Now you.”

“Me what.” Sherlock leaned forward, and Lestrade wished they were having this talk somewhere where drink was readily available.

“Your confession. About that murdering bastard. You didn’t suspect him and so provoked him on purpose. You didn’t see the drug was placed in curricle. You thought he’d doctored the nags, not the vehicle.” Lestrade pointed a finger. Figuratively and literally.

“Well, I, I…”

“Con-fess, own up, ad-mit it, come clean,” Lestrade singsonged, waving his finger in his beloved’s face.

“You insist on a confession? Very well.” He drew his coat firmly about himself, and his head tilted to one side. “I cheated. To win the piquet game, I cheated.”

“Good God!” Lestrade could hardly speak for his guffaws. “I, I _threw_ that bloody game to let you win!”

“You… Fine.” Sherlock’s lips thinned. He drew in a breath, and Lestrade fancied himself back at the gaming table. “I’m not clumsy. I’m very precise in my work. I…cut and burn myself on purpose so you’ll tend to me, because I like your hands on me.”

“Ha! I see you and I’ll raise you, kidling. _I_ exaggerate how exhausted _I_ am, so _you’ll_ tend to me! I _love_ it when you care for me!”

“Oooo! I knew it.”

“Er, no; you didn’t.”

“I do now.” Sherlock smirked.

“So do I.” Lestrade grinned. He fell silent.

“What. Tell me, Greg.”

The name prompted him. “I’m just remembering, what Mrs H said. About you tending to forget things, when you no longer care about them.”

“Oh.” And Sherlock understood, of course. Everything. A blessing…and a curse. He slithered from his perch, landing on Lestrade’s lap, eliciting a startled, pleased _ooomph_. “I’ve never cared about anyone like this. I’ve never had a friend like this. No; I don’t think friend’s the word, is it.”

‘“Friendship is love without wings.”’ There was, Lestrade admitted, no respite from Lord Byron anywhere in London. He caressed his light of love.

“ _Love?_ ” Sherlock enquired, blinking. “Is that… Oh. _Love._ ” His lips formed the most adorable beautiful shape on the word, the first time he’d uttered it. Lestrade thought Sherlock was about to kiss him, but instead he simply looked at him, a slight, shy smile just gracing that lovely mouth. In the silent communion, Lestrade understood there’d be negotiation, giving, taking: not a smooth path to a shared future but an interestingly twisted one, containing doubts hopes fears setbacks…and –

“I’ll need keeping in order, you know,” Sherlock whispered, his breath stroking Lestrade’s face.

“Oh, I know. And I also just the way to keep you in line.” Lestrade hugged him closer to fondle him. “I’ll spank the nonsense out of you. Oh, I’ll be whipping you into shape all right.” Sherlock’s face, its expression indescribable, said he found it very all right.

“Ooh, and there’s another good thing about this. About us. It will really irk my family,” said Sherlock, in a tone of deep satisfaction.

Lestrade, his head filled with visions of Mycroft swooping down like one of his damned pigeons, and the countess slapping his face, and the earl loading a pistol and telling him to run, did what any man would in the situation. He threw his head back and let his laughter peal out into the early morning.

“Come on, Viscount. Let’s get you home. And get me fed and bathed.” He stood.

“What about me?” came as Viscount Peeved was pulled to his feet.

“You can share my soap. My aphrod… Wait. There was nothing wrong with that soap, was there, you”

The accusation was halted by a Sherlock kiss so carnal, so voluptuous and abandoned and downright decadent Lestrade’s head swam. In all the caressing, suckling, parrying and retreating, lured on by that sinful mouth and those fine-boned fingers in his hair, Lestrade saw stars. He also saw how Sherlock thought he could shut him up. Huh. He’d learn.

“Home. And it’d better be a good feed,” Lestrade warned. “More than just bachelor fare.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Sherlock still sounded shy, but no longer hesitant and diffident as he continued, “Bread and cheese and kisses sounds all right to me.”

“It sounds wonderful to me,” Lestrade affirmed. “All of it. I can’t wait.”

The arm Sherlock slung around him, and the weight of his head on Lestrade’s shoulder, said he couldn’t either.

 

 

Stay tuned for the Christmas special, _The Musgrave Riddle_ if anyone's interested!


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